Preparing the Oven the Portuguese Way

While Al was pouring and smoothing a cement pad, Carmina was gathering long sticks on the property.

 Here is Carmina scratching the floor of the oven with notched sticks to prepare it for baking for the first time.  She gathered cedar branches and tied them to the end of a stick for sweeping the floor. Carmina is teaching me everything I need to know about outdoor oven baking.  She makes amazing Portuguese bread!

Then we were all ready to light the first fire in the oven.

After a fire is ready and the oven is hot, the logs are pulled out onto the brick counter.  In our case they can be slid into the barbecue on the side.  Then while bread is baking, other cooking can be done with the hot coals and logs.

The door at the right in the photo was aluminum, made from a shelf on a utility cart and a vintage handle bought on eBay.  We put it in place and then had to remove it every time we needed to get in the oven.  Carmina and I discovered this was never going to work.  Too much heat loss happened this way and we couldn't keep the oven hot enough to finish baking the bread.

And now winter was upon us in December.