Before we started with the earthen oven foundation, we created a 'tester knob' near the soil site. It was situated on a small blob of concrete. We added some used crumpled plastic water bottles on the inside to see how it worked. The test knob survived many heavy rain storms with minimal erosion.

• Kiko Denzer is the author of the book we used to guide us through this building process. Click on his name to see his pages.

• Check out Kiko's 9ft earthen oven in Oregon called Maya

• Here is a virtual tour of the Intaba's eatery where the oven Maya is located.