Building a Wood-Fired Oven for Bread and Pizza

If you're looking for the perfect backyard summer project, this one comes with its own reward: tasty baked goods and long, fun lazy weekend parties for many summers to come!  Prospect Books’ best seller is this handy instruction manual for the bread-maker and DIY enthusiast, showing how to build a bread oven in the yard or garden. Together with detailed plans (which do not omit a single block or brick) and step-by-step specification, the book doubles up as an essay on English bread baking in previous centuries, with special reference to the hardware, equipment and working methods. The history of bread is something which is almost entirely ignored in current literature, greatly to its -- and our -- disadvantage. This book was first published in 1997 and has had an annual printing since then. It sells as much in America as it does in Britain, although British sales have definitely increased in the last few years. Of course, there are other books on the subject, but few give as much historical context.