This picture shows Mark ensuring the oven is burning briskly by bellowing air through the door. It looks hot and a bit scary and believe me it is !. However like all such things, if you know what you are doing it is perfectly safe - not something to try at home though !.
Members of The Group have been demonstrating various cooking techniques for over 15 years. At Sulgrave we rennovated the beehive oven in 1991 and have been using it ever since.
With a beehive oven you need to light a fire inside and left it burn fiercely for up to an hour then you rake out any unburnt embers and ash; placing your bake directly where the fire was. The residual heat stored in the brickwork radiates back into the oven and bakes your food. Bread will bake in around 35 minutes.
Obviously you cannot top up the heat while baking so you need a deal of judgement to ensure it is hot enough but does not cool too much before the bake is complete. The baking team at Sulgrave have learnt enough over the years to enable them to do a double bake; that is bake one batch of loaves then quickly swop them with a second batch - up to 40 loaves with one firing !.
Even after that we can bake buns; bisucuits and custards; then drying out quills; reeds for stays and then finally putting in the wood for the next bake to dry it well.
Such an oven will stay warm for nearly 18 hours after the fire has been removed !.
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