To prepare the oven, a large fire is started inside about 30 minutes before baking. The oven has two openings, one large, one small, where air comes in and smoke goes out. Once the oven is hot, the firewood is pushed out into a receptacle, and then the ashes are swept out. After this, the openings are left uncovered for a while until the oven cools down to the right temperature. To test the temperature, green leaves are thrown in. If they catch on fire, its too hot. If they whither and brown, its just right. After this, the baking pans are placed inside, as close to the center as possible, and the two openings are covered with sheet metal. With this method, controlling temperature is almost impossible, so timing is everything, and the baking pans must be check often—but not too often, or too much heat will be left out. Furthermore, because the process must be repeated every time something is baked, it is best to cook a lot at one time. For this reason, the oven is big enough to fit 10 or 15 baking pans. Recipes that need more heat are placed at the center, where the fire was, and recipes that don't need as much heat are placed around the edges, where it cools off faster.

The front porch/deck here is southward facing and is a perfect spot for our solar oven here. Although this Tulsi model has 120/125V input (same interface as a standard power supply to a desktop computer), I rarely use the electric elements. This oven will get an internal temperature of about 200 F (~93 C) as set up here. Photo taken by G. Everett, a good friend of ours who works as an environmental education coordinator for one of the cities in our area.