Build Your Own Barrel Oven: A Guide for Making a Versatile, Efficient, and Easy to Use Wood-Fired Oven Paperback – September 15, 2012

I recently watched an episode of Man, Food, Fire on the Cooking Channel titled "Outrageous Ovens". The first half featured a barrel oven in Oregon. I was fascinated by the oven which appeared to be highly fuel-efficient and seemingly inexpensive to build. I immediately began searching for information on barrel ovens and found this book.It is a great little book; clearly written, nicely organized, and well illustrated with a wealth of information and resources. I like the fact that it takes in to account the varying selection of materials and approaches, depending on budget, climate and locale. The book presents the techniques in a manner that is not at all intimidating to someone like me who has little knowledge of masonry techniques. The book makes the prospect of building a barrel oven both technically and financially doable.The other very appealing aspect of this book is the modesty of the authors. This book doesn't purport to be the definitive tome on barrel ovens. It presents barrel oven construction as a fairly recent and evolving subject and actively solicits participation and feedback by any and all.I highly recommend this to anyone who has ever considered building any kind of wood-fired oven. Even if you are considering something grander such as a domed or vaulted wood-fired oven, this would be a great starter and/or companion project.I will try to update my review when I finish building my own barrel oven!

For those interested in building their own back yard barrel style oven, this is a great resource…In fact, it's the only resource I've seen in the natural building community.I've built several of these ovens over the years and this book synthesizes the process and materials into one easy to read and understand book.

I guess I was hoping for few more instuctions, details and diagrams. Some of the stories that were given are nice stories and the artistic stuff is nice too, but I bought the book hoping to get a better idea of how exactly to build one of these ovens myself, and it didnt really do that for me.

Good barrel stove design book, but as the photos tell most of the story, authors likely had difficulty filling up the 'booklet' enough to make it into a book. Still, for serious builders probably worth the somewhat high price.

Careful when buying this book. It does a pretty nice job explaining the masonry part of the job but tells little about the metal parts (and there are lots of special metal parts). Be aware that the authors expect you to buy the metal kit from their store. Towards the end of the book there is mention of a future second book covering the metal pieces but over a year down the road I've not seen it and I follow their website looking for more information. There are also quite a few recipes in this book which was disappointing filler.

This book is a wonderful starting point. You'll need to know something about materials and techniques or be willing to do some more reading for specifics, but it's hard to not get pretty excited by this fine book!

Wow !!! This is a great book highly recommendedCan't wait to build one for myself and family

Straight to the point with easy instructions nice pictures the book was well written and was an easy read. Fantastic

We are considering this design for a community oven. It should be easier to regulate the temperature with the firebox below the baking surface

I was rather hoping for a bit more in this book which is slim and quite expensive. It takes you through - step by step - building an outdoor oven - but actually some rather key steps are skimmed over and probably will need some experimenting to get it right. It is NOT an idiot's guide. But you should end up with an oven to cook masses of bread etc inAlso I was rather hoping that it would be based on the 'Rocket Technology' which makes very efficient use of dry wood. This technology uses a 'low mass' oven which uses only about 11 lbs of wood to bake 60 lbs of bread whereas that described in the book uses much more fuel.Frankly this method - the Rocket method - of building an oven is better and you can get free details from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) in Uganda - and it is a much better read both in flow and technical detail. Search for Rocket Oven Manual 2008 or go directly to[...]