Seek advice: Using Wood fired Kiln to bake bread

May be able to bake bread during the cool down cycle.  I would be leary of the glazes used in the pottery.  Making sure that the bread never contacts them or any spillage.

I learned that their wood-fired kiln (they burn pine wood) reaches temperatures in excess of 2500F.  That's hot enough to melt the wood ash, which fuses with their glaze to produce beautiful reds and browns.  It's also hot enough to do the same to bread dough, so sgregory's comment about waiting for things to cool down is on target.

Paul

Michelle,

I think you can do some research by looking into wood-fired pizza ovens. It's the same general concept. Pizza napaletana cooks around 900 degrees so to bake bread in the same ovens they scrape the ash from the oven and wait for the temperature to drop. Then you bake your hearth breads first and your enriched breads second as the oven continues to cool. 

Do you guys have experience with heating the oven? Starting with the firewood spread across the base of the entire oven and then pushing the coal to a corner etc? There's definitely a bit of an art to wood-fired baking, but all the details may not apply to using a kiln for both purposes.

Hi Michelle

My father in law built a wood fired kiln and  and i collected the mountain of pine that was required for firing which he duly denailed and stacked for months. On the designated day he and my motherin law started the firing process slowly building up the heat the process and  lasted for 24 hours, when we saw them the next day they were shatterd as well as being slightly blackened.

My father in law was a bit disappointed as he thought that he had failed to reach the desired temperature even though he was adding a pallet slat of wood every minute,  it apparently vapourises as soon as it goes into the fire. they had flame shooting from the fairly tall chimney most of the night.

When everything had cooled to allow the results to be assessed (several days) he deduced the temperature had actually been high enough as the desired glazes had melted. He only ever used it the once and went back to his electric and gas kilns  that are automatic.

From my perspective the chambers are completely different in nature with the clay items being added onto racking before firing and the kiln remaining completely closed until everything is quite cool. i also believe there are some particularly nasty fumes given off by the different glazes etc during the firing process and there could still be some nasty residues etc left behind in the chamber.

I think you will find its a matter of horses for course. Kiln for pottery oven for bread.

 A wood fired oven can accomodate the use of non fire bricks to save money apparently the pinky coloured ones are quite high in alumina and work very well a tip from a brick manufaturer and also the solid reds pretty good too.  

Regards Yozza

I would have a similar concern regarding the fumes.  The coloring in glazes is typically various forms of metal oxides, odd ones too.