Terra cotta oven stones (was [Sca-cooks] CAST IRON SKILLET)

[ciorstan at attbi.com]

Esther writes:

> Do you do anything special to prepare your terra cotta plate? For instance,
> does it need to be misted first? Tell me more! I'm currently building a
> "raised hearth" in the front yard, whose cooking surfaces are going to
> include two large terra cotta square tiles, and some other neat things from
> the pottery section!

No, not really.  It's been my experience that terracotta will retain a little
moisture no matter what, unless you subject it to a low-humidity/high heat
environment, like prebaking in an oven!  You can look into clay
bakers/romertopf cookery for soaking effects; what the slow release of moisture
does when baking bread is specifically an effect on the crust: chewy and
crunchy on the outside, moist and softer on the inside of the bread loaf.
Modern bakery ovens get the same effect with steam injection built into the
oven.

However, I would beware letting oily things drip onto the permanent surface of
your oven, unless you fire it often enough that it burns right out.  If I were
to have such an oven as you describe, I'd be inclined to build a fire,
(quickly) mop out the ashes with a wet thingie, then bake directly on the
bottom stones-- thus giving the oven a quick shot of moisture while thoroughly!
removing ashes from the baking surface (water + wood ash = lye!). If you're not
quite up to getting all the ash out of the oven with the mop (which I assume
would be a quickly acquired skill), then use a saucer until you acquire the
skill.

I scrub my saucers off with a plastic scrub brush and use only minimal water,
if necessary, to rinse when done.  My saucer hazard seems to be melting cheese
drips around the edges, as they're used mostly for pizza-baking. ;)

> Since I don't have access to the archeological information required to some
> exact replication, I'm building what I think will work, working out some
> techniques, that I will then apply to re-creating some actual early and
> ancient period hearths.

This sounds like a really interesting experiment-- I, for one, would like to
hear about it once you get it going.

ciorstan