And if you have the time and inclination, you may really enjoy the versatility of having a mud oven too. I built ours out of cinder block, clay, sand and hay. It was an incredible experience. It was hard work certainly, but it has paid for itself a hundred times over.

Constructing an oven from natural earth material such as clay and dried grass, (also called cob-building), is a fascinating skill. One can easily make a small 27-inch diameter beehive oven, which is large enough to bake 3 or 4 loaves of bread at a time. Simply create a dome shaped sand form about 19” high over a fire brick hearth and then cover it with 3 or 4 inches of a mixture of clay and sand. After the clay mixture hardens, cut out an opening (10” high), and remove the sand form. Then a fire can be built right away. After about 2 hours, when the fire heats the oven to a temperature of 400 –500 degrees F., just rake out the coals, mop the bricks with a damp cloth and bake in it.

I learned this technique from a sculptor named Kiko Denzer, who has written an easy to understand book on the subject of cob-building and mud ovens. The book is entitled, “Build Your Own Earth Oven.”

As quoted from Kevin and Donna's The Subtle Way And Its Power