Baking in a Basque Oven

The area where I live is rich in Basque tradition, owing to a wave of immigration in the late 1800s by shepherds hired by the big sheep-ranching outfits here. (Little known fact: the Australian Shepherd dog is actually a Basque breed; the dogs immigrated from Australia alongside their Basque owners to work the sheep here and were thus incorrectly assumed to be another Australian breed like the Queensland Blue Heeler.) We have Basque restaurants and Basque festivals. Some of our most powerful political and professional dynasties in the region stem from Basque families. Everywhere in the mountains around here, stands of white aspens are carved with the black initials and artworks of the shepherds assigned to protect remote flocks. And in some of those spots, you can find the remnants of the traditional brick or stone ovens used to bake bread and stews for the shepherds.

Up at Wheeler Sheep Camp, however, a group of researchers and students from the Basque Studies Center at my university restored one of these ovens to its original glory, and you can actually reserve it with your friends to have a baking jamboree. And that’s precisely what we did this weekend for my friend Jason’s Oktoberfest-themed birthday celebration: during the days we baked up a flurry of pretzels, brown bread, pork shoulder, stewed cabbage, fruit crisp, and sticky buns (highly recommended: this recipe for schweinshaxe, which we ended up making as a pork shoulder due to procurement issues–but it was fantastic, and we foraged the juniper berries for it from right behind the oven!); at night, we played ukelele and drank German beer and camped out in the meadow under the stars.

It was tricky but fun managing the Basque oven: we came away with singed eyelashes and red cheeks. But for a first shot at it, pretty successful overall. Alas, I didn’t get pictures of the food because I was too busy hauling it in and out of the oven and trying not to catch myself on fire, but if I get any photos from other folks who were there, I’ll upload.