would like to find an informative guide to cooking on a wood cook stove. can anyone help? thank you, laura

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), February 07, 2000

Answers

For starters, suggest you get a magnetic thermometer, it's about 2 inches across. Sticks on the stove top, tells you the temperature *fairly* accurately. With a little experience, you can keep the thing at a target temperature. Look for these in fireplace shops, etc.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), February 07, 2000.

Woodstove Cookery-At home on the Range by Jane Cooper. Should be available from Amazon.com or Lehman's -330-857-5757.

-- Carol (2gkr14@usa.net), February 07, 2000.

Backwoods Home Magazine has a library/bookstore of recommended titles, most of which they advertise for sale in their magazine --and maybe on the website -- I'll go check. One of these is a highly recommended title Woodstove Ccookery -- which I ordered pre- rollover but haven't used yet, since we're waiting until real crisis hits to replace the electric stove with a reconditioned MONARCH I picked up ... God willing we WON'T have to sell it to keep body and soul together, before it actual becomes useful. Anyway, go to www.backwoodshome.com, click in the sidebar on "books", click on Cooking and recipes on the next page, and Woodstove Cookery is the last title in the books list. Unfortunately the page with the description of this book is not loading now, but I do recommend the book. If you need to see somethign about it first, pick up an issue of Back Woods Home at the newstand, and it will be listed breifly in teh center "books" section.

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-- Squirrel Hunter (nuts@upina.cellrelaytower), February 07, 2000.

thank you so much for all the info. i was given a standard cookstove, am building a hearth for it and can't wait to get started using it. laura

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), February 08, 2000.

laura, here are some tips from my experience.

- Split the firewood in thin strips to get a
hot fire. The box is quite small.
- The left side of the oven gets hotter than
the right. (closer to the firebox) Rotate
items halfway through baking to get the other
side.
- Use an oven thermometer if the unit does not
already have one.
- Use stove putty to seal any cracks or openings
to the firebox. You don't want to breathe smoke.
- Run stove pipe straight up with as little
elbow as possible.
- Make sure the pipe extends 2' above the
highest point on the roof within 10' of the
pipe. You want a good draw for a hot fire.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), February 09, 2000.

thankyou all for all the great advice, this is going to work out great. laura

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), February 09, 2000.

I hope you learn it well. Food cooked on a wood stove is so much better tasting.

-- ET (bneville@zebra.net), February 10, 2000.

Its like making bread. It takes awhile before it becomes second nature. The magnet thermometer is really a help. Get one that has the colored areas showing the various temp ranges. Easier to read at a glance. And wait until you taste those biscuits. Nothing like good baking powder biscuits baked in a wood stove. What a treat! I don't have a wood stove in Florida and I miss it.

Taz

-- Taz (Tassi123@aol.com), February 10, 2000.

i made a loaf of bread 25 years ago when we were first married.it was a great weapon, really, never tried again.but do plan on getting the hang of making bread this time around, older and wiser as far as patience is concerned, so that might help. but can't wait to start using the wood cook stove, figure if i can make an edible loaf out of a wood cook stove, i can do anything. thanks, laura

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), February 10, 2000.

Here are a few more tips.

Wood Cook stoves do not maintain a constant temperature so unlike your modern stove cooking on a wood fired one requires a change of pace.

Woodstove Cookery requires patience, it takes time for the stove to warm up, time to heat the oven, the firebox needs fuel added to it on the average once every fifteen minutes to maintain even oven temp (good time to use up those little strips).

The whole top of a cookstove is the equivalent of a burner. It is hottest over the firebox and gets slowly cooler the farther you get from it. An accomplished Woodstove Cook will have three or four dishes going at once dancing across the surface of the stove in a kind of rotational dance (according to the needs of the dishes).

The Woodstove needs to be kept clean. The surface will need cleaning while you are cooking to remove splatters (these can stain the surface and be a real pain to get off). The top, sides and underneath of the oven(not inside but the outside around the oven) need to cleaned of all ashes(they insulate the oven and impede the maintaining of a constant temperature).

-- ExCop (yinadral@hotmail.com), February 10, 2000.