Salted Burritos, Soda, and Oatmeal Cookies Into The Kiln
One of my favorite kilns to fire at Penland is named Julia after potter Julia Terr who died in a car accident several years ago. It's a sweet kiln that usually produces beautiful works, maybe it's the sprit of Julia helping out. It's also a fun kiln to fire because it has no restriction and encourages experimentation. Naturally, we were up for some experimenting last week.
Despite the cold we loaded Julia after dinner. Sometimes I joke that it's against the rules to load and fire a kiln during daylight hours at Pemland but it's really just a matter of getting everything done in a limited amount of time.
We fired through the night and had planed to add salt and soda to the kiln around the time that cone 8 went down, that's around 2200 degrees. We would wrap the salt and soda in newspaper that was folded up like a burrito and feed it to the kiln. But Michele did some research and found Emily Murphy's wood chip soda recipe which is, essentially, a way to add soda to the kiln. We were already firing a wood kiln so why not add wood chips to the salt. We read that the results were beautiful.
The recipe says to make the mix about the same consistency as oatmeal cookies so that's what we named the mix.
Yes, we were happy with the results, the pots came out looking beautiful.
Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff
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| Sarah and I Loading Julia |
We fired through the night and had planed to add salt and soda to the kiln around the time that cone 8 went down, that's around 2200 degrees. We would wrap the salt and soda in newspaper that was folded up like a burrito and feed it to the kiln. But Michele did some research and found Emily Murphy's wood chip soda recipe which is, essentially, a way to add soda to the kiln. We were already firing a wood kiln so why not add wood chips to the salt. We read that the results were beautiful.
The recipe says to make the mix about the same consistency as oatmeal cookies so that's what we named the mix.
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| Covered Casserole |
Yes, we were happy with the results, the pots came out looking beautiful.
Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff
what, no pancakes ? :) gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteOh, that would have been good. Thanks Gary.
DeleteVery beautiful. My first wood firing was all through the night, and then we said, why are we doing this at night? So the next time we fired all day long, much easier to see what we were doing, and warmer!
ReplyDeleteThanks Tracey, we normally wood fire for a few days so we'd be going overnight no matter what. I haven't fired in a wood kiln that's small enough for a one day firing but I hope to one day.
DeleteThat casserole came out awesome!
ReplyDeleteIt seems I always get an overnight shift when wood firing. In some ways it's the best time. It's quieter, there are usually just two people, listening to the kiln and feeding it what it needs.
Thanks Michèle. I tend to prefer the night shift too, for many of the same reasons. Then when the perfectionist comes on for the next shift and asks how often we're stoking the kiln I say "whenever she asks."
DeleteMmmm, cookies work gorgeous...so did you still deliver them in a burrito, or just fling in a cookie like wood?
ReplyDeleteWe just dropped them into the ports using an angle iron. We used one round of cookies on each side of the kiln and 2 rounds of salt/soda on each side. The pull rings looked great so we called it done.
ReplyDelete