Get Your Hands...and Feet...Dirty. Build Your Own Horno!

El Camino Real Historic Trail Site--Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

This blog is one of those that I mentioned about taking liberties with "Chuck Wagon Musings", in that it has to do with cooking and the period of time that we were using the chuck wagons....just not wagons per sae. You will notice the Dutch oven in the opening, so...... there you have it, the connection to the chuck wagon.

What the heck is an horno you ask?  It is an outdoor oven built from Mother Nature’s materials....clay!  It is also a cool looking structure you can find all over the southwestern part of the United States.  They can be spotted around Native American establishments or communities.  It is basically an oven and can be used to cook a variety of things ranging from bread to meat, and of course a more modern dish like pizza.  Just about anything can be cooked in an horno that you ordinarily cook in a conventional oven. The fact that you use your hands--and feet to mold the clay into shape for construction of the oven is also rewarding.  I might add a warning here that you should be prepared to spend some time digging the mud out from underneath your fingers and toes because there will certainly be a lot lodged under them.  Or maybe it would just be easier to get a manicure and pedicure.

Saydbea photo from Flickr

I think it is particularly rewarding to be able to construct anything that serves a useful purpose, and I find this adobe structure especially fun when company comes over. Several years ago my wife Linda and I decided we wanted an horno (earthen oven) in our back yard, so I started looking for written material on the subject.  We found that Adobe Architecture by Myrtle & Wilfred Stedman was mostly about adobe home construction; however the last few pages were dedicated to The Indian Oven.  That part was a running dialogue by Eva and John (pueblo Indians) with diagrams by Myrtle Stedman on how to construct an oven.    The original article (1969) was the first of its kind, and this Adobe Architecture printing was in 1978.

Having read this article and anything else I could find that gave me information about adobe, I decided to embark on my first horno.  I called my friend Skip Clark who had done extensive work in refurbishing the Socorro Mission in Socorro, Texas located just a few miles from our home as well as the old jail in San Elizario, Texas.   I enlisted his help, promising him Indian bread and a cold Tecate beer with fresh limes as his pay.  He readily accepted and we started on the project.  After locating the business of Señor De La O, an “adobero” in Anthony, New Mexico,  we took my old trailer, made a couple of trips back and forth on the interstate, and brought back enough adobe bricks for the oven.  I made a couple of trips because I was also making a banco (bench) and a kiva fireplace in another part of the yard.  

A lot has been written about the proper orientation of the horno to make best use of the prevailing winds and such.  For me, the location was simple because I had just one place that it could be located, so I didn’t think too long about details, like the direction of prevailing wind.  Some printed material more recently published such as Build Your Own Earth Oven, by Kiko Denze offer specifics such as which direction to face the door of the oven and the types and composition of the adobe.   He also discusses other excellent information as to how one can utilize a sand mold and how to use cobb (wet mud) instead of adobe brick.  I located an area in the back yard and decided to face the opening of the oven towards the southeast, not because of any profound reason, or suggestions by noted authors, but because it faced the grape arbor and the bunkhouse and that location seemed to be the best visual location to build.  And besides, I’m probably not going to be cooking in adverse weather to begin with.

I had a design in mind with a ledge all the way around the oven that could be utilized as a seating area in case anyone wanted to visit and watch as bread was being baked in the oven.  (Pretty exciting stuff don’t you think?) This seating area was to be about five feet across, and the oven was to be ABOUT four feet in diameter.  With those two features in mind, Skip and I began laying the adobe in a circular pattern up to a height of about 16 inches.  Then we back filled with dirt and rock and firmly compacted the center portion and wet it down so it would be good and stable and hopefully not settle too much.  After letting it dry we added a flat course of adobe that would become the floor of the horno.  When the floor was completed, we filled in all the cracks to make a very smooth surface, letting it dry completely before adding another thin layer. 

At this point we were undecided as to whether we should lay the adobe flat to make the walls the width of the adobe or to lay the adobe on the edge and make the horno the thickness of the bricks.  We decided to lay them on the edge because it would take fewer bricks using this method.  The trick in using this method was the adobe had to be leaning to the inside and their position had to set with wet mud. To achieve this we leaned one brick against one placed perpendicular to it to keep it from falling over.  We continued in this vein until the bottom course was done from one side of the door opening around to the other side of the same opening.  The next step was to fill in all of the voids at the ends of the bricks and to mud the bottom inside edge to give it a extra strength.   Then we waited until this course was dry enough to support the weight of the next course and followed the same method of laying a course of wet mud, then setting the bricks in a leaning fashion which is already at a pretty steep angle because the dome has to be formed with a third course of adobe.  The last part was the actual key that becomes the uppermost part of the dome or ceiling.  It is sort of tricky here and all the voids must be filled to give it the necessary strength.  If you lean on it the wrong way the dome will collapse.  

It is important that you make a smoke hole.  This can be done in many ways. You just have to keep in mind that it will need to be open when you are burning your wood and closed once you put bread into the oven and seal the door.  I had an old ball and chain that we once used in a Celtic festival.  I just made a hole and filled in around the ball up to the half-way point, and it was easy to set into the hole and seal off the heat.  Once everything was good and dry I added a coat of cement plaster over the outside of the oven.  This sealed up and protected the mud from water invasion.

Well, the best laid plans of mice and men don’t always go the way you want them to.  I guess somewhere along the line I failed to read that using cement was not advised.  You see, when the cement expands and contracts it tends to crack the surface.  The water invasion occurred very slowly, sort of like a sneak attack.  At first just a few cracks appeared, and then some pieces began falling off.  You get the picture.  It was still strong enough to support my son’s 6’3” friend on top of the horno.  He told me later that the top of the horno was his favorite location when they would have their “dart wars” in the back yard.  It was a few years, maybe three or four before the collapse of the horno.  It was during the summer of 2006 when we had monsoonal rains, and the water invasion was complete, and the horno was for what the bell tolled.  We went out one morning with our coffee cups in hand heading for the bunkhouse, and we saw the horno was nothing but a heap of clay. Only the bottom course of bricks was still leaning and still standing.  As is said at funerals-ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and now horno back to dust.  This horno was now history

It was before I had a camera phone when we built the first horno and I can't find any documenting pictures of it.  The base that is pictured above is all that remained of the old oven.  I did save the clay and reused it addiing straw for strength.  All of the pictures after this point are from the "new build".  What was fascinating was the mechanical wonder that Mr. De La O engineered to make his adobe making business move into the 20th century.  It truly is a wonder when you stop and think...the adobe has been made totally by hand since Biblical times so his invention is a giant step forward.  There is a separate hopper for mixing the clay 

and various stablizing agents such as portland cement, straw, animal manure, etc.  Then he backs up to the hopper and a conveyor delivers the adobe to his adobe making machine.  He or one of his sons can then drive to the drying area where the machine exudes the adobe into the molds and then deposits the adobe block out onto the ground for drying.  Quite unique....V-8 engine and other various smaller engines to deliver power to the various mechanical systems.  So the adobe is real old school with a new twist.  I like to think that my abobe oven is the horno that O built! 
 This is a multiple post for the adobe oven, so stay tuned for the next installment...