Answer to a "Grate" Question

New blog follower "Return to Basics" asked a question about the firebox grates in the Qualified Range via a comment on the post about cleaning a cookstove.  Here is the answer.

The grates in our Qualified Range are what are called duplex grates.  This style of grate was very popular on old style ranges, but is not so common on the modern woodburning range.  Duplex grates consist of two, two-sided grate bars which lie horizontally on the bottom of the firebox.  These two grate bars have gears called grate cogs on the front of them so that when the grate shaker is attached to the left one, both rotate about a quarter turn to shake ashes down to the ash drawer.

Truthfully, the grates from the Qualified are what I miss the most about that cookstove.  While I wouldn't trade the new Margin Gem, ash removal is more difficult with its poker grate since I was used to a couple swings of the grate shaker resulting in a completely empty firebox.

The operating instructions that came with the Qualified state the following:

"If you are using wood for fuel, turn the grates so the holes are turned up, using the grate shaker provided with your unit.  If you use coal as a fuel, turn the solid side of the grates up."

The Monarch Range which belonged to my great-great grandmother (which my grandparents still had in their possession until some band of reprobates stole it while I was in college) actually had a little sign on the front that said "wood" when its duplex grates were turned with the holes up and "coal" when the solid side was up.  From what I have seen on the Internet, many models of the Monarch Range made in the 1920's had this feature.

A picture of the firebox in the Qualified Range.
This picture is taken while standing at the front of the
range, so the drafts are on the left, and the oven is
on the right.  Here, the grates are in the position to
burn wood.

Here the grates are turned to the coal-burning position.

A picture of the front door of the firebox, which
is only accessible once the front enameled surface
door is opened. 

Here the grate shaker is attached to the grate bolt.

The Riverside Bakewell down in the summer kitchen is equipped with duplex grates also.  The solid side of them is slightly different than the solid side of the grates in the Qualified because they have small perforations to let some air up to the fire.

While I like the convenience of duplex grates because they make emptying the firebox so efficient, their main purpose was to facilitate the burning of coal.  A coal fire needs to be shaken every so often so that the ash falls away from the burned edges of the coals and oxygen is permitted to get to the inner part of the coal where combustion is then taking place.

An interesting note about the Qualified Range is that the pattern for the range has actually been owned by several different companies over the years.  I have seen pictures of Qualified Ranges that were manufactured in the 1920s or 1930s, and the similarities to the stove that I purchased nearly seventy years later are remarkable.  My Qualified was manufactured in January of 1997.  At that time Qualified Ranges were made by Hitzer Inc. in Berne, Indiana.  By 2000, Hitzer had quit making the Qualified Range.  I was told that Hitzer subcontracted the porcelain enamel work and were having difficulty finding a company who could get the enamel to stick to the steel well enough for their standards, and for this reason they halted production of the Qualified Range. 

I have the list of repair part numbers that came with my Qualified and would be happy to share part numbers if anybody needs them.  The Hitzer company is still in business and perhaps they would either carry repair parts or know where one could find them.  You can find their information at this website: www.hitzer.com.  As always, if anyone has any further questions, I welcome them and will do my best to answer.

Cleaning a Woodburning Cookstove

After some unfortunate incidents with the caramel from sticky rolls boiling over on top of the stove, a rather large splash of oil while frying chicken, and a gurgle of ketchup which managed to even hit the ceiling, the time had come to clean the cookstove.  Marjorie needed a bath.

If you click on this picture, you can get a better glimpse
of how dirty Marjorie the Margin Gem had gotten.

Her cooktop was particularly unbecoming.

Grease from frying chicken had cooked onto the stainless steel trim
that surrounds the cooktop.

The light-colored square on the top of the water reservoir
is the outline of my breakfast griddle.  I had left it on the reservoir
but didn't realize that it was covering the holes which are on the left.
Those holes are steam vents for the water reservoir, and when I
realized what had happened, the griddle was sitting in a puddle of
water.  Not only did the bottom of the griddle have to be re-seasoned,
but the top of the reservoir had retained its autograph.

I started out with a stainless steel soap pad on the top of the reservoir. 

The soap pad and I were soon good friends.  We spent a lot of time together.

The soap pad skittered across the stainless steel cooktop trim,
followed closely by a damp rag.  Then, the soap pad waltzed all
over the backsplach and stainless steel section of stovepipe.

In the picture above, please note how rusty the stove collar is at the base of the stainless steel stovepipe.  When Marjorie arrived last year, like all new cookstoves, her highly polished cast iron cooktop had been coated with a thin layer of some type of petroleum product in order to keep it from rusting before it was put into use.  Unfortunately, whoever had applied this coat of oil, missed putting it on the collar.  Hence, the collar began to rust even before we had installed the stove in March, but I hadn't done anything about it yet.

The next thing that I did was begin working on the cooktop.  I rub a grill brick all over the cast iron.  This effectively removes any food and grease that has cooked onto the stove.  It also smells very strongly of sulfur.

The grill brick leaves all manner of sand in its wake.  I remove this with the vaccuum cleaner.  Next, I was on to soot and ash removal.  I removed the short length of stovepipe which connects the stove to the chimney, then began cleaning the flue which stretches up from the bottom of the back of the stove to the top of the warming oven.

A view down the stovepipe from the top of the warming oven
before cleaning.

The next step was to remove fly ash from the top of the oven and creosote which had accumulated along its right side and beneath it.  New cookstoves are generally shipped with a handy little tool called a soot rake which is made for this task.

The soot rake scraping across the top of the oven.

The manufacturer's identification plate masks the
oven clean out door.  The soot rake is pulling
creosote from beneath the oven.

After that, I drained the reservoir and began working on cleaning it out.  You can learn more about that in the previous post.

 

After the stovepipe had been cleaned outdoors and re-attached, the next job was to coat the newly scrubbed cooktop with vegetable oil.  I also put a layer of stove black on the collar.

All other surfaces were wiped clean and parts replaced, and the ashes which had missed falling in the ash pan were also scooped out.  The water reservoir was refilled, and a new fire lit.  As the coat of vegetable oil burned onto the stovetop, the kitchen took on the scent of a large hot breakfast griddle, and Marjorie was once again a gleaming beauty gracing our kitchen.

A Rag and a Rock in My Reservoir

Grandpa Doc, my great-grandfather, had a favorite cousin by the name of Bessie.  By the time I came to know Bessie, she was a little antique lady who lived in a little antique house on the edge of a Southwestern Iowa town which was not our own.  She was the sort of person who had several reasons to feel sorry for herself, but who couldn't find the resources of personality or the asset of extra time in order to have a pity party.  Instead, her outlook was always bright and humorous, and the result was that I now wish that I could have spent many more hours listening to her reminisce than the few with which I was blessed.

She was once telling my grandmother and me about the summer that she and her husband had lived in the mountains of Colorado at some sort of mining or logging or oil drilling post.  Conditions had been primitive at best, even by the standards of seventy or eighty years ago, and the reason that they only stayed for the summer was because choosing to stay into the fall was the same as committing oneself to stay until the next summer because the roads became impassible with snow earlier than in most other places.

I had recently purchased the Qualified Range when Grandma and I went to visit Bessie, and Grandma is fond of bringing my woodburning cookstove penchant into conversations with people whom she feels might be suitably impressed, curious, or horrified at this bit of knowledge about me.  (I have to admit that with the right crowd it can be quite a diversion in an otherwise humdrum discourse.)  When Grandma brought up the woodburning cookstove that day, it was sufficient kindling to launch Bessie into a detailed memoir about her Colorado summer because it was there in that camp that she had had the most experience with a woodburning cookstove.

Bessie's husband's job (I'm sorry that I don't remember what it was) was of the sort that resulted in him coming home filthy every night.  Fortunately, her husband valued good personal hygeine.  Unfortunately, the cabin where they made their home did not have running water.  Thus, his nightly bath water had to be pumped from a well some yards away, lugged to the cabin, heated on the woodburning cookstove, and poured into a portable bathtub before the grime that Bessie's husband's person had accumulated could be removed.

As Bessie recalled the toil that bathing involved, she said, "And the water that we had up there was so hard that a cat couldn't scratch it."  Both my grandma and I dissolved into giggles at that Bessieism.

Lovely story, Jim, but why are you sharing it here?  you may ask.  What does this have to do with woodburning cookstoves?  I'm getting to that.

I tell the Bessie story because our well water here at our farm is also hard.  I do believe that a cat could scratch it, but it is full of minerals nonetheless.  Therefore, I am learning about how to handle hard water in the reservoir of a wood cookstove.  As I have stated before, reservoirs were traditionally used to heat rainwater when it was available, and rainwater is naturally soft.  Not everyone had the luxury of a rainwater cistern, though, and so one occasionally does come across advice from our ancestors about how to minimize the build up of lime on the inner lining of the reservoir.

My brother bought Mildred Armstrong Kalish's book Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on and Iowa Farm during the Great Depression in an airport on one of his many travels on behalf of the Iowa Corn Growers' Association.  He lent it to me, saying that he figured I'd get around to reading it before he would.  Two years later, I proved him correct and discovered that Ms. Kalish had included quite a bit of information about cooking on a woodburning cookstove amongst her memoirs of growing up during the Great Depression.*  One such memory dealt with hard water in cookstove reservoirs.  She said that what her family used to do was to tie a piece of cloth around a clean rock and place it in the reservoir.  The cloth would collect the lime deposits rather than the sides of the reservoir.

I was immediately skeptical, but I've seen (and scrubbed) the inside of our teakettle, and I knew that we didn't want that kind of mess in our reservoir, so I decided I'd give it a whirl.  Nancy and I sacrificed a portion of an old cotton tea towel, and she tied it around a rock which had endured a thorough bath.  Into the reservoir it went, and there it stayed from March until last Sunday afternoon.

The rock in the rag in the reservoir.  Ahh, I love alliteration.

Last Sunday afternoon, I decided that it was high time to thoroughly clean the whole stove (stay tuned for an entire post about that process), including the reservoir.  As you can see in the picture above, the reservoir has accumulated lime deposits on the side and bottom of the copper lining, so I was not impressed with the effectiveness of the rock-in-the-rag technique--until I removed the rock.  I was AMAZED at how much lime had truly accumulated in the cotton around the rock.  The material literally felt like it had been saturated with sand, and it had to be put through a wash cycle to get it all out. 

Needless to say, once the cloth was dry, it was re-tied around the rock and submerged in the reservoir again.  I'm going to try to remove and clean the cloth more frequently and see if that helps reduce the rate at which limescale is building up in the reservoir.  Indeed, there is a rock and a rag in my reservoir.

*The book was very interesting insofar as its content about the Great Depression, but I wouldn't recommend it because of the sprinkling of unbiblical theology which it included.

Homemade "Heinz" Ketchup

One of life's unfortunate circumstances is that the season for canning tomatoes does not coincide with the bitter cold of December. If it weren't for the fact that it is usually blistering hot weather when tomatoes begin to produce in earnest, tomatoes and wood cookstoves would be the perfect match. After all, it seems like every tomato canning recipe necessitates the use of one's largest kettles in addition to the water bath canner, and the recipes often involve long stretches of gentle cooking--all of which are easiest to do on the wood cookstove. Making ketchup is no exception.

I'm a ketchup lover.  I'll admit it.  I am not ashamed.  And because I love ketchup so much, I started several years ago to attempt to make homemade ketchup that was palatable.  I studied recipes and studied recipes, and then I cooked and stirred and cooked and stirred.  Some of what I made was all right, and on a good day it might have been considered palatable, but a sizeable portion of what I produced made its way back to the garden in a dark, brownish red, and thoroughly unappetizing new version of compost.  I was sort of in a quest-for-the-Holy-Grail-of-ketchup-recipes mode during each tomato season that amounted to anything.

Enter sister-in-law Susan, who keeps me supplied with a steady stream of fascinating, unique, and often unconventional cookbooks.  Susan gave me a copy of Cooking with the Horse and Buggy People, the first in a pair of cookbooks by that name (ISBN 1-890050-16-4).  In it I found a recipe entitled "Heinz Catsup" which was submitted by a Mrs. Henry M. Troyer.  Despite the fact that spelling the word "ketchup" c-a-t-s-u-p is one of my biggest pet peeves, I gave the recipe a try, and my search for the perfect homemade ketchup recipe came to a happy end.  I'll be the first to say that the end product is not exactly like the beautiful crimson nectar that pours forth from the Heinz bottle, but it's close enough for me.

The recipe calls for a peck of tomatoes and three large onions.  I don't have a peck basket, but I have found that if I fill my 16-quart stock pot with tomatoes and then slice the three large onions into it, everything comes out just fine.  I have used several different varieties of tomatoes, but my preference is Romas.  Gently cook the tomatoes and onions until the onions are soft.  We find that this process takes over an hour.  Stir frequently to make sure that it is not scorching; it is particularly vulnerable to doing so at the beginning of the cooking time.

Tomatoes and onions beginning to cook.  I added some more tomatoes
after this picture was snapped.  Also, please note that the pot was not left
directly over the firebox for very long.  It was moved to the right
 shortly after this picture was taken as this mixture can scorch very easily
even though the bottom of this stockpot is very thick.

Once the tomatoes and onions are cooked, run them through a food mill.

Running the cooked tomato and onion mixture through the mill.

Press as much of the pulp from the tomatoes and onions through
the mill as possible because that is the part that you end up saving.

When you are finished running the tomato mixture through the food mill, you will have a large bowl of thin tomato juice.

At this point, you want to line another large bowl with a cloth bag.  We use an old t-shirt of mine.  The neck and sleeves have been cut off, and we tie the cut end shut with cooking twine.  You then poor the tomato juice into the bag.

Only the first few scoops of tomatoe juice are in the bag in this picture.

Once all of the juice has been put in the bag, tie the bag at the top.  Then, suspend the bag in such a way that the pulp can drain for two hours.  I've read ketchup recipes that say that you should discard the tomato juice.  This seems wasteful to me, so we often can it for use as soup base.

The bag of tomato juice hanging from the clothes line
which is above our Jotul heating stove.  We used to be
able to hang the bag in the kitchen, but our remodeling job
prevents that at the moment.

Drained tomato and onion pulp.  It looks a lot like raw hamburger,
doesn't it?

To the drained pulp, you now add the following:

4 C. white sugar

1 tablespoon salt

1 pint of vinegar

 

In a small square of cloth (in our case a piece of the shoulder from the t-shirt) you tie the following mixture of spices:

 

1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. dry mustard

 

Put all of this together in a heavy-bottomed stockpot and return it to the stove.  Bring it to a boil and let it boil for ten minutes.  Be warned that this step can get pretty messy.  As the ketchup boils, it has the ability to splash a long way.  You also want to stir pretty frequently during this step because the mixture is very thick and easily scorches.

 

The ketchup coming to a boil with the cloth bag of spices in it.

Once the ketchup has boiled for the ten minutes, remove the spice bag.  Poor the ketchup into jars, adjust lids, and water bath can.  We can ours in quart jars, and I process them for twenty minutes.





The recipe as given yields two quarts.  We put two batches of pulp together; double the sugar, vinegar, and salt; and then put two spice bags in the mixture while it is coming to a boil. 

Two batches of ketchup boiling away in the water
bath canner.  Note the splashes of ketchup on the
warming oven.  This is why I mentioned that it can
be a bit messy.

Side notes:
I pushed the pencil on this recipe a few years ago to see whether it was at all economical to make your own ketchup.  The result was that the cost to make the ketchup was so close to the cost of purchasing ketchup that if I didn't economize on canning lids by using two quart jars instead of four pint jars, my homemade ketchup was more expensive.  Of course, many people would say that there is a great deal of value in knowing exactly what went into your bottle of ketchup, so the penny pinching becomes less important.

As always, I have to point out the efficiency of using a woodburning cookstove.  While a pot of the tomato and onion mixture was boiling on the cookstove, we were also cooking a batch of salsa and baking a chicken casserole as well as heating water in the boiler and the reservoir.  One small fire can do so much when you have a cookstove!  With conventional appliances, we would have had four heating elements or gas burners going to accomplish these tasks.  As it was, we had energy to spare.

Ketchup, salsa, and a casserole cooking on Marjorie the Margin Gem
while she also heats our domestic hot water.

Use of the Warming Oven

In her comment on my post entitled "Little Things Mean a Lot," reader Tracy asked for more information about warming ovens.  I felt that I needed to do some more research and photography before I could write a quality post about this wonderful feature of the woodburning cookstove, so I'm tardy in replying.  So at long last, here is my reply.

Terminology

First, a little background information about warming ovens.  I often see places on the internet where people mistakenly refer to the warming ovens on cookstoves as "bread warmers."  I'm going to show you just how judgmental I can be sometimes and admit that when I see someone refer to warming ovens as bread warmers, I immediately figure that they know little about cookstoves.  The only other accurate names for warming ovens that I have seen or heard with any frequency are "warming closet" or "high closet."  I'm sorry to get so technical on what to call these features of the woodburning range.  It's just that they are so versatile that limiting them with the term "bread warmer" just doesn't cut it.

Location

As you can see from the pictures below, the warming ovens on both of the stoves that I use are above the cooktop.  This is the most common location for warming ovens; however, I know that in the past, some models of Home Comfort ranges and Monarch ranges had additional warming ovens below their baking ovens.  Our Qualified range had only a high shelf above its cooktop, but it did have a storage drawer beneath the oven which could have been used as a warming oven.  Depending on the style of range, the stove pipe may extend through the center of the warming oven; otherwise, it usually makes its vertical trek just behind the backsplash and warming oven.  It seems to me, though, that the position of the stovepipe has little to do with the temperature of the warming oven.

Dimensions



It is quite rare to find any information in advertisements, catalogs, or the Internet about the size of warming ovens.  Dimensions for warming ovens apparently are not considered selling points for woodburning ranges, and apparently this was true historically as well.  Thus, all I can do is provide the measurements for the two warming ovens which are in use here at our home. 

The Margin Gem's warming oven measures 37-1/2" W x 10-3/4" D x 6-1/2" H.  Since the stovepipe extends through the center of the warming oven, about 9" of the width measurement is rendered useless.  It is important to note here, though, that the door of the warming oven is very sturdy, and since it opens down and creates a surface which is level with the floor of the rest of the warming oven, the Margin Gem has a usable warming surface that is actually 18" D x 34" W, less the area of the stovepipe.

The Riverside Bakewell's warming oven is about two inches deeper on the bottom than it is on the top.  This design causes the familiar backward slope to the warming oven doors and is responsible for the fact that they stay closed without any kind of latch.  The bottom depth measurement is more important than the top because the bottom is where you would place things.  The Riverside's warming oven measures 36" W x 10" D x 8-1/4" H.

Temperature

During my research, I monitored the temperature of the warming ovens on both stoves while the fires were hot enough to maintain a moderate temperature in the baking ovens.  Temperatures in the warming ovens ranged from about 140 - 185 degrees.  The Riverside Bakewell seemed to maintain a very even 150 degrees, while the Margin Gem fluctuated a bit more.  Naturally, if the fire is burning cooler than what would be necessary to have the baking oven be at moderate heat, the warming oven's temperature will correspondingly diminish.

Temperature Control

Of course, the warming oven can be cooled by opening the doors, but I also have noticed that its temperature can be significantly affected by the location of vessels on the cooktop.  The warming oven receives its heat in three ways: from the stovepipe as it travels through or along the back of the warming oven, from the splashback as it rises from the back of the stove, and from the radiant heat of the cooktop itself.  Of these three sources of heat, the only one that the cook has any real control over is the radiant heat from the cooktop.  Thus, if you want a higher temperature in the warming oven, pots and pans on the cooktop need to be moved toward the front of the stove to allow the heat to radiate up to the warming oven.  If a cooler warming oven is desired, pots and pans should be located on the back of the cooktop, directly beneath the warming oven.

You will notice in some of the pictures below that I often line the floor of the warming oven with folded towels.  This is because the floor of the warming oven is the hottest part of it, and sometimes it is too hot for what I'm trying to do with it.  The towels form some quick, easy-to-clean insulation which allows additional versatility.

Uses

Hmmm.  Where does one begin?  Something tells me that this won't be my last post about warming ovens.  Of course, the warming oven is the perfect place to warm cold plates and serving dishes before serving a meal, but this is just the beginning.  The first two pictures below show cooked (or partially cooked) foods keeping warm while other parts of the meal or entree are being prepared.  This is also a common use of the warming oven, and it is particularly convenient if you are the sort of cook who has difficulty getting every part of a meal to be done at the same time.

Cooked foods keeping warm in the warming oven while other dishes finish.

The next picture shows loaves of bread rising on the open door of the warming oven.  The warming oven would be too warm for bread to rise if the door were shut, and the capacity would be severely diminished, too.  Actually, since this picture was taken, I have been doing a lot of baking for the Monday Markets, and I now always put a bath towel down on the open warming oven door beneath the loaves of rising bread.  The inside surface of the warming oven door gets quite hot when the door is open and nothing is on the cooktop to block the heat radiating from it, and it was too hot for the bread dough.

Bread loaves rising on the open door of the warming oven.

Of course, the dry heat of the warming oven also creates a perfect place for drying bread for making bread crumbs.  In the picture below, several slices of bread are resting in a pan to dry out in the warming oven.  After they were completely dried, I popped them in the food processor and created finely textured, delicious bread crumbs that later became the breading for homemade onion rings.

The temperature ranges listed above are within the range that are recommended for food dehydrators, so I'll be trying to dry other foods in the warming oven in the future.  Has anyone out there tried this?

Slices of bread drying out in the warming oven.

Another convenient function of the warming oven is heating canning jars before they are filled with
hot food to be canned.  Having the jars hot before putting hot food, boiling water, or bubbling jellies and preserves in them prevents the jars from breaking due to the rapid temperature change of putting hot food into cool jars. 

Jelly jars staying hot in the warming oven before they are filled with
boiling peach and strawberry preserves down in the summer kitchen
back in July.

I have discovered that the warming oven is also the perfect place to soften butter.  I've learned to be careful, though.  If the butter is in a bowl that is making direct contact with the floor of the warming oven, it can become a puddle in a hurry.

Butter softening in the 150 degree heat of the Riverside Bakewell's
warming oven.

For some frozen foods, the warming oven is a great place to defrost.  I think this is why Susan from Stoves and More Online calls her warming oven her "Amish microwave."  I'm naughty, of course, so I've actually defrosted meat in the warming oven.  I'm sure that any food science expert would tell you that I shouldn't do that.  More frequently, I use the warming oven to defrost our homemade applesauce (packaged in our chic freezer containers which were originally margarine, whipped topping, cottage cheese, or sour cream cartons) which I don't think presents any significant danger.  I put the containers on a plate to buffer the high heat of the floor of the warming oven as well as to catch any condensation from the outside of the container.

Applesauce defrosting in our "Amish microwave."

As you can see, the warming oven of the woodburning cookstove is an extremely versatile piece of equipment.  I imagine that as colder weather sets in, we will discover even more uses for this ingenious feature of the cookstove.

One last note: The temperatures that I have recorded for the warming oven are exactly in the range of temperatures offered by the modern warming drawer, which has become a feature of today's upscale home kitchens.  Online prices for warming drawers range from right around $900 to an eye-popping $1599!  Yes, these electric conveniences offer the user more precise control over the temperature, but their capacity is fairly comparable to the warming oven, and I can guarantee you that the extra charge for having a warming oven on the Margin Gem instead of a high shelf was not $900.

A Word or More about Pressure Canners for the Wood Cookstove

As I was reflecting a little bit further on my post about pressure canning on the wood cookstove, and as we are in the height of the canning season again, I wanted to offer a few thoughts about what to consider if a person is going to be purchasing a canner for use on a woodburning cookstove.

In my opinion, one should consider the following three items when choosing a pressure canner for use on a wood cookstove:
a) Choose a pressure canner that has a completely flat bottom.  For quite some time, the only new Presto canners that I saw in stores had bottoms in which the center had a circle approximately the size of the large burner on an electric stovetop.  This center circle protruded slightly from the rest of the bottom of the canner.  This is a good design for a canner which will be used on an electric or gas range for a number of reasons, but this is not a good design for use on a woodburning range.  A completely flat bottom on a canner will ensure the maximum amount of heat transfer from the range top to the canner because the whole stovetop on a woodburning range emanates heat, not just a comparatively small burner.

Last year, I did see new Presto canners with completely flat bottoms, and I believe that the All-American canners have flat bottoms, too.

b) What jar capacity do you desire for your canner?  I've canned with seven different pressure canners over the years, and it seems that many canners hold seven quart jars or nine pint jars in a single layer.  Some canners allow you to have two tiers of jars being canned at once.  This has the potential to double the capacity of your canner.  I sought a canner that was tall, not because I wanted to can two tiers of jars, but because I wanted to be able to pressure can in two-quart jars.  This is no longer recommended by the USDA, so please don't tell them that I do it.  All I can say is that I haven't killed anyone yet, even though I might have wanted to. 

Unfortunately, one must also remember that the flipside of increased canner capacity is increased weight, and this leads us right to the third consideration that one must make:

c) How much will the canner weigh when it is full?  The reason that this is a concern is because when the canner is finished with its processing time, it will have to be removed from the cookstove in order for it to cool and release its pressure.  This means that you have to choose a canner that, when full, is not going to be heavier than you can lift off the stove and carry to wherever you want it to cool.  You can't just turn off the heat of a wood cookstove like you can on other heating devices.  Thus, extra large canners that might be wonderful on a modern range or an outdoor turkey fryer will probably do a fine job of canning on a woodburning cookstove, but will present a huge, heavy, hot, and potentially dangerous problem once the canning time is finished.

If you have experiences--good or bad--with canners and woodburning cookstoves please feel free to share them in the spirit of trying to help others learn by commenting on this post.

Things I'm Learning from Baking for the Monday Market

I'm starting this post on the evening of July 9th.  I don't know when I'll get a chance to finish it, though, so I wanted to make it clear that when I refer to "today," today was July 9th.

Today was the fourth Monday Market for which we've baked breads, cookies, pies, rolls, or cakes.  All of this baking has been completed in the woodburning cookstoves here at the farm.  On the first Market day, I didn't yet have a rhythm figured out, and we had to fire up the Riverside Bakewell down in the summer kitchen in order to get everything baked on time--or nearly on time.  Since then, we have managed to do all of the baking in the house on the Margin Gem.

When I say "all of the baking," that phrase may not mean much unless I give you a rundown of what we have been hauling to the market.  Here was today's inventory: 19 loaves of potato and whole wheat bread (this doesn't count the four loaves of experimental raisin bread that I deemed not good enough to sell yet), 11 double-crusted fruit pies, five and a half dozen cinnamon rolls, and various other items which were not baked.  Last week's inventory was similar except that we only had six pies, but had two batches of cookies, three more loaves of bread, and two half-size angel food cakes.

Needless to say, I've been learning a lot about operating the Margin Gem cookstove each Sunday afternoon and Monday.  Here is a rundown of my new knowledge.

a) I've learned that the oven thermometer on the Margin Gem, which I had previously thought was woefully inaccurate, actually just continually registers about 30 degrees cooler than the oven really is.  With this knowledge, I have been able to remove the freestanding oven thermometer which I had placed inside the oven, making it easier to maneuver all of the pans.

b) The waterfront on the Margin Gem produces a lot of hot water.  I'm beginning to wonder about what we will do with so much hot water when the cookstove is being fired 24/7 during the winter months.  Perhaps a radiator can be rigged up to provide a little heat to the basement?

c) The Margin Gem and the Vaughn range boiler combine to create a much greater thermal mass than what was afforded by the Qualified Range.  I foresee our house being much warmer this coming winter than ever before.  Not only does the stove hold its fire much longer than the Qualified ever could have, but it also holds heat longer due to its larger size and presence of such large pieces of firebrick in the firebox as well as the presence of the water reservoir.  In addition, the boiler itself radiates a great deal of heat.  In fact, after we return home from the Monday Market, we make it a point to use as much hot water as possible to get the kitchen cooled off.

d) Even though the oven on the Margin Gem does a beautiful job of browning the bottoms of the loaves of bread and rolls (see post entitled "Little Things Mean a Lot"), I still have to finish cinnamon rolls with the sticky caramel topping on the stovetop after they have baked sufficiently.

Sweet rolls with sticky topping finishing their cooking on the
hot stovetop.

The top of a pan of sticky rolls after they've been turned out.

e) Finishing sticky rolls on the top of the stove can be messy.  The beautiful cooktop on our Margin Gem bears witness to what happens when a couple of eight-inch round pans of sticky rolls boil over.

I guess this means that I'll have to do a post about how one goes
about cleaning the cast-iron top of a wood cookstove.

f) If your oven is full, you can "bake" a casserole on the stovetop.  Since the oven is full all day on Monday, the noon dinner for my help and me has to be cooked on top of the stove.  I took the extra oven rack, put it on the top of the stove.  Then I put the liner of an electric roaster upside down on top of it.  Thus, we were able to have a "baked" casserole without using the oven.  In truth, the bottom of the casserole was pretty brown, but it was certainly edible.

The improvised casserole cooker atop the Margin Gem.

I've been shopping around a little bit for a stovetop oven so that we could increase the oven capacity for Monday Market baking, but I haven't bought anything yet.  Has anyone out there used a stovetop oven on the top of a wood cookstove?  If so, please comment and let me know how it has worked for you.

g) I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this last one, but here goes.  It isn't the end of the world to run the air conditioner and the woodburning cookstove at the same time.  Don't worry, the kitchen is closed off from the rest of the house.  We've been using the Riverside Bakewell down in the summer kitchen fairly frequently this summer, but the trek is just too far to make baking on this scale feasible down there.  At least the electric hot water heater gets a rest on summer Mondays!