[Sca-cooks] Fwd: Oven temperature question

[MD Smith]

> Interesting.  From your experience, how long do these ovens maintain their operational temperature
> once the coals are removed?  And, do these ovens use wood coals, or actual coal??  I have heard of
> a few ovens which are still coal-fired, in use in the eastern U.S., but I know that these ovens do
> maintain a coal fire during operation (under the cooking surface, if I am not mistaken).
>

The ovens were fired with wood. Coal would have fouled the surfaces. I 
have no experience with coal fired ovens other than the ovens in coal 
fired cast-iron stoves. If I never have to mess with a coal stove again, 
it will be too soon!

When planning the baking, the head baker (not me) determined whether we 
needed to get one or two batches of bread from the firing. If two 
batches, the oven was fired somewhat hotter and the first batch watched 
carefully and snatched out before it could burn. The second batch took a 
little longer to bake, but probably only a few minutes. To my best 
memory, we never did the obvious thing and stuck an oven thermometer in 
there. The head baker went by experience.

The falling temperatures allowed for pies, then cakes. The bread baking 
was usually finished by 1 or 2 PM. A load of pies, a load of cakes and a 
load of cookies later and it was 5 PM - "quittin' time"!

At the end of a day of baking (usually a Saturday), one of the cooks 
made several "Mother Tyson's Tomato and Cheese Pies" and the other 
historic interpreters on the site brought beer and a good time was had 
by all. So the oven was still hot enough after 8 hours to do a few pizzas.

It was not uncommon for us to do a crock of beans - ready to go in after 
the pizza came out and left in over night. When I fetched them out the 
next morning (@15 hours later) the pot was too hot to handle, but the 
air temp in the oven was not scorching. The oven mass was still warm, so 
I'd do a batch of "laundry" and drape it over the dome. In the winter 
I'd stick a bowl of bread dough in the "cool" oven for its first rise, 
then take it home to finish.

BTW, for those large batches of bread (@ 50 loaves), the head baker did 
the prep work in her kitchen and brought the dough over to the Tyson 
House for shaping and the final rise. She lived a block away . . .