Baking Bread in a Solar Oven in the Utah Winter

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The New Sun Oven

Happy day!  I finally got a Sun Oven of my very own.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.  It only took a week and a half or maybe two to get it out of the box.  I know, if I'm so excited about it, why wasn't it out on day one?  I've been busy.  Really.  And every day I thought about getting it out it was cloudy or the day had gotten too late to get it heated up.  So finally on Monday it was a nice sunny day and I was able to get it out of the box and set it up.

I put it on a board so the cement drive wouldn't scratch the bottom up.

A new Sun Oven comes with protective film on the reflector panels that needs peeled off.  It peels off clean, but is stuck on there pretty good--takes a bit of time to get it all off.

Then it needs to sit in the sun and cook empty for a bit to cook off the "new" before you cook your food in it, so I angled it toward the sun using the handy low-tech adjuster leg in the back and let it sit out and heat up while I went to town and did some shopping.  No, it doesn't need to sit that long, I just needed to get to the store and that was the best time to do it.

When I got back I turned it back toward the sun which had moved while I was gone and let it heat up again.  When it was good and hot I decided it was a good time to wipe it out.  Well, why I thought that was a good time I do not know--the oven was only about 350 degrees inside.  So after it hissed when I touched it with the wet rag, I thought better of it and turned it away from the sun and opened it up so it could cool off before wiping it out.  Duh.  Yep mom, just like when I was younger and always had to be reminded that food right out of the oven was hot.  Should be obvious, but alas, obvious is obviously not always at the front of my mind.  No damage though and I should remember next time.  I can learn.

If I had nothing else going on I could have had it wiped out earlier and had time to cook in it also, but the timing didn't work, so I thought I'd cook in it on Tuesday.  However, Tuesday brought wind and overcast skies, and we're having the same today so we'll have to wait for another sunny day to cook in it.  So excited!

Shameless plug:  Remember I'm a dealer for the Global Sun Oven, so when you want one, let me know.  :)

More Sun Oven Cooking

Last night's dinner: Ribs and rice cooked in the Sun Oven. Amazing. You need one of these. And I'm a dealer for them. Shoot me an email or use the link on the right side to order :)

Cookies in the Sun Oven

I've borrowed a Sun Oven from a sweet friend, and since it's been sunny, I've been out experimenting with it a bit. I got it out Monday, intending to cook some bread in it since I was baking bread anyway, but it had never been out of the box, and the instructions say to let it heat up and then cool down and wash the interior before baking in it (you know, to burn off the "new" fumes), so that's how Monday's baking went--all the bread just went in the regular oven.

Tuesday was nice and sunny, so I busted the sun oven back out to bake some cookies. Here it is all set up in my yard:
After 20 or so minutes, it had heated up to about 310 degrees. Really. All you skeptics out there that think it would take two hours to heat up a solar oven, it really did heat up in 20 minutes. Here's the thermometer:
And just for good measure, here's a photo of the back of the sun oven with the height adjustment leg to enable you to aim it right at the sun. EASY.
I made my husband's favorite oatmeal cookies and put a pan of them in the oven. The cooking chamber isn't extremely large. I used a smallish pan instead of my regular cookie sheets.
This cookie recipe is 350 for 10 minutes, so I checked at 10 minutes and the cookies weren't quite done (of course, since the heat level was lower than 350).
Here's how we looked at 15 minutes. Done. Actually a little overdone--they were a bit dry. Not burned, just a bit dry. I pulled the second batch out a little sooner with better results.
That's steam coming out the top of the door when I opened it. Yep, it gets that hot in the oven.
The cookies were delicious, and cooking in the sun oven was easy. I'm definitely sold. I'll be trying something else this week before I have to give the oven back. :)