Tips and tricks for cooking with a wood stove (and my adventures with learning to use one!)

We have this beautiful wood stove with an oven:



We have lived here for two years now, and I haven't used it. I've been a bit scared of it. But not anymore! I have succesfully lighted a fire and there was no smoking from wrong places.

Since I'm a complete newbie with using a wood stove for anything I thought I would ask for some tips and tricks. I would appreciate even the basic knowledge and things that might feel obvious to some. I know nothing!

One thing that bothers me is that I feel like the stove top is put down the wrong way around. If it was the other way the two smaller "hot plates" would be right on top of the fire.. I might be wrong though. Does anyone have any idea on that?

Beautiful stove, Saana!

I can't help with any tips or tricks as I need to learn as well! But I can say that the kitchen stove in my Bulgarian house had the same layout with the big circle directly over the firebox and the small ones to the side, over the oven. The circles lifted out as well, so pots could be directly over the fire, which explains the number of pots with blackened burned out bottoms in the shed!  My guess is that a bigger pot with a lot of water in it, for example when preserving, needs more heat to get and keep it boiling.

I was surprised how long it took to get water boiling on the wood stove in the living room that I did do some one-pot cooking on last autumn.

I love my range cooker! I use it for almost all my cooking, and have done for the last 15 years. Maybe I just like playing with fire! It's not the best design of stove, but is reliable and not dependent on electricity.

I expect that all woodstoves are a little bit different so what works for me may not work for you.

The first thing to get right is the fire - like any woodstove make sure you have good wood for burning. It should certainly be well cured with a low moisture level. 'Hardwood' really does make a hotter fire than 'softwood'. Having a cooler fire may be desirable for some sorts of cooking though.

Second, the stove will have a thermal inertia. That means it will take a while to heat up, and cool down. My stove probably takes about 3/4 of an hour to get the oven up to temperature. This will depend on how well I lay the fire, how windy it is and whether I am using the top of the stove or not. Possibly whether the water is cold or not too (I have a boiler matrix in my stove too). The top plate gets hot and will boil a kettle in 12 minutes or so from cold however.

Once the stove is hot I can adjust the oven temperature by putting the hot gases either through the oven or bypassing it, also by the airflow I let through the firebox. Slightly counterintuitively the oven gets hotter when the firebox door is closed - the slower air sheds more of it's heat into the stove rather than sending it up the chimney.

If you've got something that will take a long time to cook, you need to make sure the fire is restoked in a timely manner.

I find the oven keeps things rather moist. This is wonderful for roast meats and slow cooked cakes, but less good for crisping up roast veg. It's possible that the vents it is supposed to have are rather blocked.

I actually use the oven a lot for preheating and cooking rather than the top, since the top will make the room uncomfortably hot in the summer if the lids over the hot plate are open a lot. A full English breakfast is easily cooked on a tray either on the base of the oven or at the top, although eggs I usually do on top so I can keep an eye on them. No cooking smells that way too, which is good for strong smelling foods like chutney. I'll cook fruit for jam in the oven, just bringing it up to stir and add the sugar, and for the final boil as I'm testing  for set.

I can tell when the oven needs the flues cleaning, since the oven starts to take much longer to get up to temperature. Cleaning it out is one of the (many) things my husband does. The design of our stove makes it a pain to clean the flueways out, so parts of it don't get cleaned as often as they should.

I have a lower oven that has much cooled temperatures, but is hot enough for meringues should I make such things. I use it for drying fruit and vegetables, sterilising jars for jam, preheating plates and slow cooking stews and keeping food warm.

If I were to get a new cooker I would like to look at the walker cookstoves. I think  a rocket stove and oven would be rather nice!

I took the first step and reheated some leftovers from yesterday with the wooden stove! Yay!

It was a bit nerve-racking and I was being all serious about it like I would explode something if I make a wrong move (yes please, do laugh).
Everything went well and I didn't burn my food. Victory! The stove top is not really flat so a lot of moving the frying pan happened. I think that when I get my new old cast iron pans restarted things will get a little better on that matter.

I think reheating stuff is a good way to practise, there's a smaller chance of messing things up too bad.

Jane Mulberry wrote:But I can say that the kitchen stove in my Bulgarian house had the same layout with the big circle directly over the firebox and the small ones to the side, over the oven. The circles lifted out as well, so pots could be directly over the fire, which explains the number of pots with blackened burned out bottoms in the shed!  My guess is that a bigger pot with a lot of water in it, for example when preserving, needs more heat to get and keep it boiling.

Thank you Jane, that makes sense! I have seen wood stoves where the "hot plates" consist of rings so that different sized pots can be put "in". I feel like I'm not making sense at the moment, I don't know the right words to use!

Nancy, thank you! Great information!

The oven we have, I'm supposed to light a fire in it to warm it up. There's no option to redirect the gasses from the firebox (see the beautiful fire symbols on the firebox and oven doors!).
We also have an oven on top of our masonry heaters fireplace that heat's up nicely when we heat the masonry heater (about once a day or every two days when it's not that cold). I started using it this fall and oh my, how awesome it is to stick things in it in the evening and have lunch ready the next day! Brilliant!

I think I'll try something fast baking with the wood stove oven first.. Maybe cookies? I have no idea how long I have to have a fire in it and how long it keeps the heat for so fun experiments ahead for me!

Saana Jalimauchi wrote:I feel like I'm not making sense at the moment, I don't know the right words to use!

Me too! I'm sure those things I called "circles" have a proper name. I've also seen the ones where the hotplate is made up of multiple rings so they can fit the pot better.

I needed to clear my kitchen for some very needed renovations and decided to give the previous wood cookstove to a neighbour who wanted it in return for her son moving it and all the broken stuff out. It was a good quality stove, but way too low to the ground for me. I am short, but the previous owner was tiny! So once the kitchen renovations are finished, I will have the fun of choosing a new one. It will be a whole new learning experience experimenting and discovering how to use it!

Hi Saana,
That is a beautiful stove!
I think the important things have been covered pretty well...especially good dry firewood.  Having cooked and canned and baked on a little leaky wood cook stove for more than a decade I can't think of anything to add...except this thread makes me miss it

Hearing that it is an oven where you build the fire inside though made me think you might like to see the woodfired oven where our son bakes so have attached some photos.

They light a fire everyday, even though they only bake 3or 4 days a week, because it takes so long to heat the oven back up if it goes cold.  He says that burns for 5-6 hours before a bake and then he cleans it out to start the bake in order of heat needs...focaccia, fruit breads, loaves then cookies.   The garlic focaccia we can smell from blocks away

The oven has a place to push the coals and ashes into a cart underneath...I wonder if yours has similar on a smaller scale as it would be smokey to remove from the front?

This oven is huge and the peel is over 6 feet long.  He spends a lot of time using it to rearrange the loaves as they bake since different parts of the oven are different temps.

Let me know if you have any questions for him and I'll ask.

Wow, Judith, that's an amazing oven! Making bread in it must be such a labour or love!

I think Saana's stove doesn't have the burn directly in the oven, there's a separate firebox on the left and the oven is on the right, heated by the flue gases which pass around it.

Jane Mulberry wrote:Wow, Judith, that's an amazing oven! Making bread in it must be such a labour or love!

I think Saana's stove doesn't have the burn directly in the oven, there's a separate firebox on the left and the oven is on the right, heated by the flue gases which pass around it.

Hi Jane...I understood this to mean a fire directly in the oven?
(Quote below is from Saana's post up aways)

The oven we have, I'm supposed to light a fire in it to warm it up. There's no option to redirect the gasses from the firebox (see the beautiful fire symbols on the firebox and oven doors!).

Oops, Judith! I missed Saana explaining that part!

That's an interesting way to design a stove. It will making cooking an adventure for sure!

Woooah Judith, what a magnificent oven!

As Jane said, it must be a labour of love to bake bread with it (beautiful wording, Jane).

I like to think that everything we do, we give our energy in to it and when you really have to work with the oven and the things you bake.. There’s a lot of love in the end product! And it starts from building the fire! (Or cutting the firewood.. Or felling the tree.. Or hugging the tree when it’s alive! )

Indeed, the fire is built inside my oven too. I’ll attach better pictures from the oven and firebox doors. In the back of the oven there’s an opening from where you push the coals and ashes down.

Oh and thank you Judith, I will ask if something comes to mind!

Well yes, a labor of love but also a business that's been local for thirty years here...so it is a job for five people all together...the starter is protected and decades old although I got to smell it the other day before a feeding
They are very particular about the hardwoods used so can get a reliable fire.

Would love to see the inside of your oven/baking space when you can post another picture?

I have been cooking on a wood burning stove for more than 35 years now, and would not want to cook on anything else.  I have found that, besides the fact that it will of course depends on what wood you use, how dry it is and what is the weather doing, i.e. cold, very cold, windy, damp etc, no 2 stoves will work the same, even 2 of the same make and model.

The best way to learn is to just use it in anger and find out what makes your stove tick!  We moved to a new house 4 years ago and it had a wood burning cooker in the kitchen, same as the one we had in our old home.  Would you believe it, it took me 2 months to get the hang of the wretched thing, even after all those years!  So go for it, don't give up and most of all have fun!

Olga, thank you for the words of encouragement!

I made pasta and sauce yesterday! I really, really enjoyed cooking with the stove. Something about having to be more present in the moment.. And the warmth of the stove.. <3

I think I’ll make some pancakes in the morning. The pancake pan is my only ”working” cast iron pan at the moment and I’m loving it! I have only used it on the induction stove top for now.. We’ll see how it goes with the wood stove!

I have been looking for a coffee pot in the thrift shop, but haven’t found anything nice yet. We currently have a basic coffee maker but if I’m heating up the stove in the morning, why not make the coffee on it too..

And now that I wrote this I remembered that I have a cast iron tea pot.. Why wouldn’t it work for coffee on the wood stove??

Judith Browning wrote:Well yes, a labor of love but also a business that's been local for thirty years here...so it is a job for five people all together...the starter is protected and decades old although I got to smell it the other day before a feeding
They are very particular about the hardwoods used so can get a reliable fire.

Would love to see the inside of your oven/baking space when you can post another picture?

Judith, I tip my imaginary hat to your son and his coworkers.

I took two pictures from inside the oven:

Saana Jalimauchi wrote:The oven we have, I'm supposed to light a fire in it to warm it up.

Is the oven connected to the flue?  In other words, if you light a fire in the oven, can the smoke escape?

Saana Jalimauchi wrote:One thing that bothers me is that I feel like the stove top is put down the wrong way around. If it was the other way the two smaller "hot plates" would be right on top of the fire.. I might be wrong though. Does anyone have any idea on that?

In a conventional wood-fired cookstove, the eyes on the right would be to access the side of the oven for cleaning.  It is not clear to me how your stove is configured, so I do not know if that could be a reason or not.

Welcome to Permies, Max!

Max Planck wrote:
Is the oven connected to the flue?  In other words, if you light a fire in the oven, can the smoke escape?

Yes! I could actually make some Paint art this evening and draw up a diagram on how the burn gases travel from the oven and the stove top fire box.

In a conventional wood-fired cookstove, the eyes on the right would be to access the side of the oven for cleaning.  It is not clear to me how your stove is configured, so I do not know if that could be a reason or not.

Hmm. It might be. Although the last time the chimney sweeper person came to clean everything up, he just lifted up the whole top, no just the rings.


Pancakes were a success, no trouble at all! I’m seriously in love with the wood stove now. <3

And guess what, I made coffee too! I remembered Paul’s cowgirl coffee thread and took a tea strainer, put some ground coffee in it and poured boiled water through the strainer straight to a cup. I let it steep for a while and voilá!
Small amount of coffee grounds did end up on the bottom of the cup but otherwise everything was well, I got a tasty cup of coffee!

So glad you have your stove up and running well...can't wait to hear of your sourdough bread adventures in that beautiful oven!

Thanks for posting the inside oven photos...it looks well used and plenty big.

Our son is interested in seeing it also so will show him the pictures soon.

I have a fire in the oven!!

I heated the stove top once more after the morning to heat leftovers for lunch and then I thought why not.. Heating the stove top got the oven heat up to about 100C. We have some sourdough pizza dough, let’s see if we get it hot enough for pizza!

Our electric oven goes to 250C so I would be happy with that but the built in oven thermometer goes up to 500C..

Very exciting!

Oh wow! Big adventures. It all looks wonderful, and you're heating the kitchen nicely in this cold weather, too!

We baked some pizza!

I fed the oven wood for about an hour and then had it on red hot coals for another hour. We then pushed the remaining coals to the side and back and baked three pizzas one after another.

It worked wonderfully! I measured the bottom of the oven with a infrared thermometer after we had baked all the pizzas and it read 225C. Next time I’ll check before the first pizza, I’m guessing it was quite bit hotter.

Jane, actually I’m heating the whole house, we have an open layout. The previous owner took out three walls - well actually two and a half. The kitchen has an island built on top of half of the old brick wall.

Which is awesome, because there’s no way of overheating the kitchen to the point of uncomfortable!

Wonderful! Congratulations!!!
There's no stopping you now

Can you tell us more about the stove when you have a chance?
How old is it and is it typical for your area?
Is it in a corner or the middle of the house?
Built from fire brick or regular brick and the outside is enameled?

Judith Browning wrote:Can you tell us more about the stove when you have a chance?
How old is it and is it typical for your area?
Is it in a corner or the middle of the house?
Built from fire brick or regular brick and the outside is enameled?

Sure I can tell, at least something!

The house was build in 1994 so I'm guessing we should throw a 30 year birthday party for our wood stove (..and the house) next year!

I think it is quite typical stove in Finland. You can find that kind of stove top and fire box doors at thrift shops quite often. However, the words the chimney sweeper guy used the first year when I asked for him to tell me how it should be used were "okay, lets see how this is built". So I'm guessing there are multible ways they have done the brickwork when building these kinds of stoves/ovens. (Which kinda makes sense if I actually think about it. )

With the original layout it would have been in the corner of the kitchen somewhat in the middle of the house (I'm going to attach an amazing layout picture of the whole house in the end of the post.).
Here's a pic from the "living room side". On the left you can see the masonry heater and behind the wall is the wood stove. I love how they took half of the brick wall down and put the island on top of it!



Bricks.. The outside is those red bricks but the insides of the firebox and oven are light gray brick. So I'm guessing both? I know basicly nothing about bricks.

The outside is not actually enameled, it looks like a whitewash over the red brick or something like that. I have read that whitewash is commonly used with brickwork so I'm guessing it's whitewash.

Here's the layout drawing, totally not in scale. Red is the wood stove, orange is our masonry heater thingy. As you can see, there's also the sauna behind one wall but in the same group. It all goes up the same chimney in the end.

Max Planck wrote:Your pan is interesting!  I have never seen anything like it.  In my experience, pancakes are always just made in a frying pan or on a griddle.  They can kind of go all over and get thin, too, if the consistency of the batter is not quite right.  Do you poke a fork under your pancakes to turn them?  Or...?

I have not seen many of these cast iron pancake pans either. But when I saw it in the thrift store all sad and crusty with a tiny price tag I just had to take it home!
I have a small-ish metal spatula that does the trick of flipping the pancakes just nicely! Although a fork might be even easier. ;D

Are (were) coffee percolators strictly a U.S. thing?

I had to search to find out what a percolator is so.. I'm guessing they never were a thing in Finland. ;D

I'm just over the past few months getting accustomed to using a wood-fired oven and stovetop.  For sure it's a 'micro' version of the types being shown here already, but it's made in Serbia and sold at various importers in the U.S.  It replaced a regular woodburning stove in our main parlor area....fortunately, I was able to exchange the stoves and use the same stovepipe and chimney that had served us since the early 1990s.

What I'm needing to get used to is the adjustments on the flues/dampers to get the right circulation of flue gases for optimum heat in the oven chamber.  Also, the "timing" of the burn so that I am not cooking too close to the start of the burn, nor to the end of the burn. [ I can see my late grandmother rolling her eyes at what was so apparent to her own skills with a wood-fired Monarch stove used on the South Dakota prairies in the early 20th century! :-)  ]  .....And then there is the proximity of the dish being prepared to the stovepipe, which often will be a bit hotter than other parts of the oven chamber.   Yes....my wife let me know which side of the pumpkin pie was mine to eat at the end of the Thanksgiving meal....the quite dark side!! lol.....

But what I'm so thankful for is that this new stove has a smaller footprint than our previous stove, while not sacrificing efficiency and the ability to heat the main floor of our old farmhouse.  Granted, it is early days of this first winter of its use and we have only dipped down to ~ -15C a few times....quite colder weather to arrive soon no doubt, even with this El Nino year.

John, I've been wondering whether to get a stove like that for my kitchen in Bulgaria rather than a more traditional style with the oven beside the firebox. The smaller footprint is appealing! Does the top get hot enough to cook on?

Jane Mulberry wrote:John, I've been wondering whether to get a stove like that for my kitchen in Bulgaria rather than a more traditional style with the oven beside the firebox. The smaller footprint is appealing! Does the top get hot enough to cook on?

Hello Jane!

I have not tested the cooktop yet except for warming a tea kettle or placing a soup pot there to warm back up for the evening dinner.  If you are able to access this YouTube video you will see a demonstration of using the cooktop of this stove and some explanation of when to use the top versus the oven, since the heating of the stove as a whole can influence in what order you may wish to do baking vs. stovetop cooking:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO02vISEhxk

Please note in the video that she is giving temperature readings in Fahrenheit whereas the temperature gauge on the front of the oven is in Celsius.  The address of the stove manufacturer in Serbia is added below....I don't know if they manufacture only for certain export markets or if one would readily be available for purchase in Bulgaria or importation.

One of the other things that I like about the stove is choice of stovepipe positioning:  In the video, the woman is using a stove with the stovepipe exiting the upper back panel of the stove.  This allows full use of the stovetop surface for cooking.  In the video, you can see that the stovepipe port on the top of the stove has a 'plug' or flat piece of metal covering the hole so that the exhaust gases exit the rear of the stove into the stovepipe.  In my photo, you can see that I chose the top rear of the stovetop for stovepipe attachment......I removed the 'plug' and used that port instead to accommodate the positioning of the stove closer to our wall and this allowed minimal re-construction of the stovepipe for installation of this new stove.  Let me know if this is unclear....

A final aspect that I like is flexibility of installation for the user's needs.  I made the photo below during installation of the stove.  The photo below shows the top of the stove with the stovetop surface and the oven compartment removed:  In fact, the metal stovetop plate simply sits on a stove gasket so that (especially if installed like shown in the video) you can just remove the stove top for access to the inside not only for cleaning, but also for moving baffles (the black metal pieces along the sides) or firebrick into best locations for your burning needs.  Due to the manner in which our chimney draws exhaust, I found it better to remove the baffles and some of the firebrick separating the burn chamber from the oven chamber.  The ash tray under the burn chamber has its own door and the pan is easily removed for removal of ashes.  Perhaps this may work for you??...Good luck, Jane!

Thanks so much for all the information, John!

I don't think the exact same Serbian-made model is available in Bulgaria, but I've been looking at a very similar Bulgarian-made stove as one of my options for the kitchen. This will help me decide.🙂

Tips from the 25 years I spent cooking on a wood stove:
The heat you get from a piece of fuel follows a curve that you can get to know and use. Adding a new piece of wood will at first lower the heat, as the fuel steams off any water in it and absorbs enough heat to start burning. When it first bursts into flame, the fire is consuming volatile compounds that flash off quickly. Then as the charred wood is consumed, the carbon in the wood releases a lot of heat energy which slowly declines as the piece is burned to ash. Adding small pieces often will maintain a high heat, whereas a single load of larger wood will slowly get very hot and then slowly cool down.

Experience with your own stove will tell you how long the delay is, and how long you can coast on the particular type of wood you use.  Baking should usually be done on a falling fire. That is, get the oven a bit hotter than you'll want it and then stoke it only minimally. When my eldest son was 10, he decided he wanted to learn to bake cakes. He made a small single-layer cake every day until he could get one to rise perfectly and brown evenly in the wood-burning oven. It was a great lesson in scientific method.

Here's a good trick to go from medium cruising heat to a hot stove for a bout of cooking without using too much wood : 10-20 minutes before you want to start cooking, put several small pieces of wood onto the coals in the firebox  and shut the stove down. The wood will absorb heat and lose moisture. Then when you open the stove up, the extra oxygen will be fed onto fuel that is already hot and dry, ready to burst into flame all at once rather than gradually. The ultimate test of stovetop cooking is making popcorn--if the heat isn't high enough right from the start, the kernels just dry out and eventually burn without ever popping.

I suggest having different sizes of wood available.  Wood with a small diameter will burn up faster than a fat piece, so it is great for getting the fire started, but also for something like baking where you want less of a dip in heat when that fuel is added. On the other hand, if you're letting brisket or stew slow-cook in that oven, larger pieces of wood are called for. Sometimes you want to keep the stove lit, but not to heat the house overmuch. In that case, it helps to use wood that's cut in a short, fat chunk, so there's less fuel but it still lasts longer than a long thin piece, even though they're the same volume.

If you have a cast-iron stovetop, consider having one section you keep polished and clean for cooking on directly. Toast, tortillas, and pancakes are best cooked right on the stovetop where you have more space and more heat than in a pan. When my grown kids get together, one of their happiest shared memories is of the stovetop covered with pancakes on a winter morning!

This is a helpful thread! We are planning to build a house beginning in the spring, and I have purchased the walker full masonry cook stove plans to use as our primary cooking method, and heater. So I’m learning what I can!

Jamie, you mentioned cooking directly on the cast iron stove top. I am wondering what your method is for keeping it clean? That sounds fantastic to me, but I worry that anything you cook on there would just continue to burn and smoke until the stove cools down. Or do you have a method to clean it while it’s hot? Any insights on your method are appreciated!

The top (or a section of it) is kept polished.  Not spotless, but rust-free and smooth. It's like taking care of a cast-iron pan.
Have you ever looked at the cooking setup at a cafe or diner? The cook makes your fried eggs or hamburger or whatever on a cast-iron cooktop, not in a pan. The large surface means that dozens of orders of eggs and fried potatoes and such can be made at once. An increasing number of home ranges have built-in griddles as well. Using your woodstove is the same process, just with a different heat source.
Since it's a common thing in commercial kitchens, tools exist to keep the griddle clean.

For everyday cleaning, you scrape with a heavy spatula or with an implement--I don't know what they call it, but any restaurant supply house would--that's a rectangular blade with a wooden grip running along one long side. A scraper, I guess you'd call it. That gets off the big bits.
If needed you can clean and polish with griddle screens, and wipe clean with a rag. You could use any pot-scrubber, but the ones for griddles are made rigid and flat so you don't develop a wavy surface over time. You know those barbeque-cleaning pads they make in a plastic holder with a handle on top? They would work, but you can get a non-plastic version made for a flat griddle. Back when I used one, it was a metal holder with grit-impregnated disposable screens that last a long while. I think it took me years to use up a pack of screens.  Most of the time, just the scraper and a rag will do it.

There's also a tool for when the stovetop is very rusty and you're getting it into shape for cooking, or you need to recondition the surface. You'll need to do this even if you don't cook directly on the stovetop, as there's not much heat transfer from a rusty surface.  Pans sitting on a rusty stove don't heat up well, and you have to use far too much fuel, overheat the room, etc.  You can buy blocks of lava (or a synthetic equivalent) about the size and shape of a large brick. The sides are flat and level, so grinding your stovetop with the brick leaves you with a level surface, which is again important for heat transfer to your pans. You heat up the stove and then let the fire go out. When the stove is still warm, but not hot, you grind the stovetop with the stone, using some kind of oil or tallow as a lubricant. I use cheap vegetable oil, but anything will work--tallow, lard, crisco, etc, even mineral oil. When the rust and mess is off, and the stove is polished, wipe well with a rag (or paper--you can use your oily wiping cloth or paper for starting the next day's fire.) You'll probably need to use a bit more oil to remove all the grit. You can rinse with water if you want, making sure to dry the surface well so it doesn't rust. When starting the stove next day, there may be a bit of smoke for a minute, but if you keep wiping while it heats, there shouldn't be much. If you start with a new stove, or one in good condition, you may never need to do this, but many older stoves have rusty or pitted tops, and it's good to know how to remedy that.

On fishing boats and tugboats in the north, they still have oil-fired cookstoves that are like a woodstove with a diesel oil burner where the firebox would be in a wood stove. So marine supply houses in places like Seattle, Maine, or Northern European port cities would be familiar with the implements as well.

Oh how I envy those of you with a wood fired oven!  My husband has promised to build me one for years, but he is over 80 now and slowing down a lot as I am, so may not happen.  

I do cook on top of my Fisher wood stove, and if the fire is too hot and something might boil over, I put tiny pebbles under it, three of them to balance it.  Works great.  If I let the fire die down to coals I can slip the Dutch oven inside and lay hot coals on top to bake bread but only if the grate is out, otherwise not enough room.  

My husband build our cookstove. The original was light sheet steel, cut with a hacksaw (he wore out 12 of them) and riveted together with cut-off nails. When that rusted out, we paid a welder to recreate the design in steel plate. We had a cast-iron top from an old oil stove to build around, and so we designed it with the firebox on the front, and the oven door around on a different side. That way, the fire box ran along the back side of the oven, rather than along one side of it. There were smoke channels all around the top and sides of the oven, to heat it evenly, and the door was a stainless steel sheet pan 1" deep, filled with insulation and riveted to a piece of steel. So the oven cooked very evenly. There was a flap that opened or closed the smoke channels, worked by a rod that stuck out the front of the stove. In normal use, the smoke went straight from the firebox up the chimney. After a good draft was established, you could use the rod to close off the straight route to the chimney and send all the smoke and heat around the oven. It worked great.

It's worth mentioning the difference between cast iron and steel plate, as it's important to the performance and few people really understand the differences.
A lot of efficient modern stoves are build from steel plate. It's very strong, and can be welded together to make an airtight stove. The plate is both strong and forgiving--it will bend rather than break and is very solid. Salts and minerals will either not affect it, or affect only the surface. The downside of this strength and resilience is that it is not dimensionally stable--when heated it will expand a bit and the surface, which is not totally flat to begin with, will become wavy or bowed. This is problematic for a cooktop, as pans need a totally flat surface for good heat transfer.

Cast iron is very different. It is very stable. With heat, it does not bend, wiggle, wave or bow, so once it's machined to a flat surface, it stays flat. Rather than bend or warp, it will crack or break. This dimensional stability is due to it's crystalline structure.  The downside is that the structure is somewhat porous. That's why you can season your cast iron pan with oil--a bit of oil is absorbed by the pan as it cools. That porosity means that salty wood (driftwood for example)  or cardboard with colored (mineral) dyes on it will eventually be absorbed into the structure and corrode it. Unlike steel plate, it can't be welded together, so it's cast in single pieces that are then held together with fastenings and caulked with furnace cement.

As you might guess, many people believe that the best compromise is a welded steel body with a cast top.
You can certainly cook on a welded steel stove--but it's not ideal, and most of them are designed chiefly for heating the room.
You can certainly heat the house with a cast iron stove--but it will be harder to control because it has more points of entry for air. And if it's designed for cooking, the firebox may be quite small.

There are important design differences between stoves meant for heating and those meant for cooking.
A pure cookstove has a small firebox, so that the wood is very close to the stove top and a small fire will have a fast effect. I rented a place with a Waterford cookstove and it was truly impressive how fast you could go from a cold stove to hot coffee in the morning. Conversely, if you weren't around to feed that tiny firebox all day, the house got cold.

If you already have or can scrounge a stove, you can make it work. Like baking in the firebox of the that Fisher heating stove--that's a lovely piece of making-do and substituting skill and experience for equipment. However, if you are starting from scratch and looking for a stove, it's worthwhile thinking hard about what your actual needs are. Especially the large firebox/small firebox issue is one worth examining carefully. How long do you need the stove to run unattended? How much cooking will you realistically do?  If I were making a custom stove design, I would consider having a shelf or ledge on one side of the firebox to make a little cooking fire on. Then for heating you could load the larger firebox with big pieces that would go longer.

One final note. It's good for a stove to be controllable--you don't want your house to be overheated and your wood supply to be used up. On the other hand, I feel that too much is made of the "hold a fire all night" issue.

Our stove was well-built enough that we could indeed hold a fire all night if we needed to. But be aware that to do that, the stove has to be shut down so far that it's giving off virtually no heat, and creating a lot of pollution via smoke, creosote, etc.  Our preferred solution was to buy a really good big restaurant stockpot that held 7 to 10 gallons of water. We kept it on the stove, just sitting there providing hot water whenever we needed any. (no electric or gas water heater required.) Before bed we'd run a nice fire--not overheating the house, but getting it nice and cozy, and heating the water good and hot. Then we'd leave the stove on low but not totally shut-down. It would go out during the night, but the water would be hot, and would stay hot enough to heat the room somewhat. We found that the heat radiated by that hot water kept our cabin from freezing more effectively than keeping a fire all night. And we didn't have to deal with the build-up of dangerous creosote in the chimney (a major cause of stack fires, which are truly terrifying.)

Thank you Jamie for sharing your experiences - particularly that of cleaning the top of the stove. My stove has a hot side (over the firebox) and a cold side (over the oven) The hot side never gets rusty. It gets splashed when cooking and I wipe or scrape it as necessary. I cook pancakes (what we would call drop scones) directly on it, which works superbly, although I need to scrape the oil varnish off afterwards. The cold side or simmer side I use far less (I tend to slow cook in the oven instead) and that has become rougher and of less use as years have gone by. I have seen griddle stones in some commercial catalogues and I think, based on your comments, I may treat my stove to one next time we have occasion to order from them.
The tip on having hot water on the stove top is a great one too. My stove is cast iron and has a fair thermal mass, but adding to this will not be a bad thing. I've taken to stoking the fire well before we go to bed so that it is burning well, but then not fully damping the fire, so that hopefully it will be burning cleaner through the night. This does mean (depending on the weather) the stove may be pretty cold in the morning. Also the insulated lid on the hot side of my stove has lost  its insulation, so I usually balance a kettle full of water on it to give me a head start with a cuppa in the morning...There are lots of other options for adding thermal mass, if you don't need the hot water too.

Jamie Chevalier wrote:A pure cookstove has a small firebox, so that the wood is very close to the stove top and a small fire will have a fast effect.

There seem to be a paucity of pure cookstoves these days.  Evidently, the demand is for heating stoves with ovens and glass in the firebox doors.  Anyway, that accounts for almost everything "cookstove" available, today.  Margin still makes no-nonsense cookstoves.  The upper-end Esse ranges are made for cooking and not heating.

I am not disparaging heating stoves with ovens.  We used a Kitchen Queen for years.  For those who want heat and the option to do some cooking, such stoves can be ideal.  Notwithstanding, some people have purchased that kind of stove and then found cooking with them resulted in an overheated living space.

Jamie Chevalier wrote:I rented a place with a Waterford cookstove and it was truly impressive how fast you could go from a cold stove to hot coffee in the morning. Conversely, if you weren't around to feed that tiny firebox all day, the house got cold.

We have a Waterford Stanley, now.  I concur completely with this statement.  It heats up -- even from stone cold -- very quickly.  But, yes, if we plan to be gone for an extended period, or even over night for that matter, a good sized chunk of hickory helps, but the house is almost surely cold after we get home or up.

Nancy Reading wrote:The hot side never gets rusty. ... The cold side or simmer side I use far less (I tend to slow cook in the oven instead) and that has become rougher and of less use as years have gone by.

The cooking surface on our Waterford is, mostly, porcelain coated.  The region over the firebox and a large lid in the center are bare cast iron.  I am not sure I ever appreciated why that was done, but perhaps Nancy's experience explains it.  It is certain the porcelain keeps the cast iron from rusting.

That is a beautiful stove.

There have been a lot of useful tips here.

If I had a wood stove I would want a pan of potpourri going all the time.

Besides adding some moisture to the air potpourri smell so good.

I would suggest putting lemon slices, bay leaves, whole cloves and cinnamon sticks in a pan of water and slowly simmering on the stove.

Anne Miller wrote:Besides adding some moisture to the air potpourri smell so good.

I would suggest putting lemon slices, bay leaves, whole cloves and cinnamon sticks in a pan of water and slowly simmering on the stove.

Oh Anne - that would make the whole house smell of Christmas - what a great seasonal idea! I think I might try some pine tree tips in that too for the final touch.

I have been considering cutting some rosemary to simmer.

Pine tree tips sounds good too.