Dakota Oven in a cob lined hole

I made some egg bread using a dutch oven right on top of about 10 coals, and it was enough to make 2 batches of egg bread in my special pans inside the oven.
Then I got to looking up 'Dakota Oven'' and found no standard way to do it (10 people have 15 diff. methods), so I was wondering If you could dig a hole in the general shape you wanted and then form the rest of the hole just so it could have coals all around and a grate at the bottom so air could come up underneath.

In case you don't know what egg bread is: I got these pans after watching a Korean street vender make 'em:  put thin layer of pancake mix on bottom, then sausage (already browned) mixed with eggs. 3 eggs is enough for 2 batches.

Ingenious ... great cooking tip for the backyard!

I wonder if this method makes for a safer fire where "fire bans" are in existence, almost year-round these days ... perhaps the backer board is designed or screened enough that sparks don't go flying. Perhaps some steel pipe scraps for the air tube ...

I'm off to look this method up as well ...

Thanks!

the only flame I have is when I start the coals using one of those metal cylinders with the flap in it. I have a bunch of egg cartons filled with dryer lint embedded wax. I can usually get 10 or 12 coals going with 2 of the egg-cartons starters in about 10 minutes. As long as there's no wind, it's pretty safe to cook this way. Just make sure all the coals are out when you're done.

Do you thing there would be a way of doing this with wood rather than coals - I'm assuming that by "coals" you mean commercial charcoal briquets?

Yeah, charcoal works best. I don't think wood would work at all in this application.

Dan Swartzenheimer wrote:Yeah, charcoal works best. I don't think wood would work at all in this application.

Have you ever considered making homemade charcoal in a TLUD? When they're used for making biochar, you burn until all the volatiles off, but there is no reason you can't stop the process early and end up with wood charcoal.
Yes, making a TLUD is on my list, and they're not that hard except my hands aren't really large enough to use the grinders we have safely and I haven't found a volunteer to help with that step when there are other critical path things higher on the list!

Where I live at in eastern WY, there's not that many trees, but there are, in fact coal mines so I would be more interested in building a stove that burns coal. At any rate, I'll so a search for TULD.

After searching for TLUD in wikipedia, it says you can use manure and where I live at, there are plenty of cow chips laying around.

Dan Swartzenheimer wrote:After searching for TLUD in wikipedia, it says you can use manure and where I live at, there are plenty of cow chips laying around.

I believe cow pats are a known fuel source in India. Charring them first in a TLUD might deal with the smoke issue that's the normal concern. We have a biochar forum here on permies that will have good links also. https://permies.com/f/190/biochar