While it’s true that I’ve been singing the praises of our Sun Oven for more than a year now (see Cooking With Solar) it recently proved, unequivocally, that it is an indispensable item on our homestead: it made pizza!
Now that it’s truly proved its worth, we’re keeping it! (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
Like most people, we really, really like pizza! Even so, it’s taken us till now to try making pizza in the solar oven. Normally, we make it in the evening, after the sun goes off the beach, which makes solar cooking impractical. However, a need for portable meals led Michelle to make pizza in the morning recently. Once that proved convenient, the next step, baking it in the solar oven, seemed logical.
The manual on the Solar Oven describes how the cooking process leads to better melding of flavors in foods; the pizza proved even better than our usual product. We’ll be looking forward to more opportunities to do this, even if we have to get up early to do the prep work.
So, while we’ve been thrilled with the unit’s ability to provide us baked goods, fish, soups, and many other foods, as well as seasoning cast iron (see Seasons in the Sun) and performing other useful tasks, we’re totally sold now that we know it’ll also bake our pizzas!
That is great. We love Pizza as well. My wife would make it everyday if she could. We have not gotten a solar oven yet. I am slowly making the transition to using less conventional ways of living. We are looking at some land close to the Nevada border ( 20 acres ) and thinking of building an off the grid retreat. Reading your blog has helped me immensley with affirming my ideas and some that i have never thought about.
Thanks so much Mark for your blog and your details. We hope to one day meet you guys. Be well.
And if you are ever in Utah, you have an open invitation.
Hi Jon, I think Real Goods is having a sale on the Sun Oven at the moment. It’s an updated version from ours, with some good improvements. I think it also comes with a bunch of extras, like drying racks. They’re online at realgoods.com.
Good luck with your plan! I have grandparents in Nevada, and have always loved visiting there, although it seems like a different planet to me. Thanks for the invite, too. I don’t know if I’ll ever visit Utah again, but life’s unpredictable.
Well, that explains why Michelle has been living on pizza at work all month.
That, and the leftovers from the dinner friends took us to at The Fireweed. It was an embarrassment of riches, but we persevered.