Solar ovens part 1

I created my first solar oven about 2 years ago. It was a pizza box design. I had seen instructions on how to make a solar oven in Cody Lundin's book 'When All Hell Breaks Loose', a book I highly recommend for all kinds of reasons. I put my first solar oven together and spent time testing it- it didn't do much. In fact, it sucked. I had made it all wrong and it couldn't warm up a piece of pizza, much less cook anything.

So, I tried again. I spent a bit more time and put together my first functional solar oven.

After playing with it a bit, I 'cooked' my first meal- I warmed up a piece of pizza. And while my daughter ate it and thought nothing of it (she did not see me do this), I was excited. I proceeded to make rice, eggs and other things in it. I had a vision of cooking everything in it- and while I could only warm up meats, I cooked lots of vegetables.

My attempts to make bread ended in failure. I tried a few times in a few ways. In the picture above, you can see a ring in the clear turkey bag top; this happened in my last attempt to bake a small loaf of mesquite bread. I put a lid on the pot to generate more heat and the dough rose up and pressed the lid against the plastic sheet.

My solar adventures ended as winter approached. Not for lack of sunny days, but for the fact that the sun sunk too low for me to continue to cook anything in it. I shelved it, sadly, for the season.

The hottest I could get this oven to be was about 160. It was ok, but I wanted more.

As an aside, I would use rocks to hold down the pizza box oven as the wind would blow the top open. Can't cook if you can't retain heat.

And I will post on how to make these as I go along.