From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, September 15, 2008:
Baking in a wood-fired oven is not a new thing. The technology has been around for centuries in varied forms, Zimmer noted, but the technology has evolved right along with taste and food consumption in society during the course of those centuries. The oven used at Calypso Farm is known as a black oven, which burns wood in the same chamber the food is cooked in; the actual fire is either pushed to the back of the chamber or pulled out of the oven before the food is put in, depending on what is being cooked.
When the oven is fired up, as it is about once a week, the fire burns long enough to heat up the bricks, which can get as hot as 700 to 800 degrees. The bricks hold the heat, usually enough to cook four rounds of bread with each firing, with eight loaves in each round. They plan the baking process according to the heat of the oven.
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