Our traditional wood-fired bread oven

In 1996, tourism in Peru was still in its infancy. The country struggled to polish its image abroad and convince the world that it was safe to visit. At first, it was mostly backpackers who came to Peru, along with a mix of artistic, bohemian, and adventure-seeking wanderers. These individuals were drawn by the enormous potential and entrepreneurial opportunities they saw in a country that had to be rebuilt. Many of them, including myself, moved to Peru—especially to the Sacred Valley—either temporarily or permanently, seeking a new life.

When I bought my farmland, there was nothing on it except a crude shelter for animals with a rusted corrugated iron roof. I managed to turn it into a livable space, but of course, it was basic and improvised. I was about to finish building a small house on the land when I met Wolfgang, a German baker who was renting a room at my neighbor's house across the street. Trying to make a living, he baked bread for some expats living in Cusco. We quickly became good friends. I was fascinated by how he kneaded wheat flour into a smooth dough with his powerful hands, transforming his craft into the most delicious bread I had ever tasted.

We decided to build an oven at my place so he could bake more bread and expand his business. But we were determined to build the best wood-fired oven ever made. We took our time to research, speaking to many (mostly elderly) locals who knew the traditional methods for constructing clay ovens.

They told us that a smoking pipe was unnecessary, as it would reduce the temperature. They also explained the materials and techniques needed to build the oven. However, they never warned us that sourcing the materials would be the most difficult and challenging part of the project.

We had to make a wooden brick mold to shape the bricks for the oven's dome, and the clay to make the bricks needed to be prepared in a very specific way. Normally, clay bricks are made from a mixture of fine clay, sand, water, and straw, then dried in the sun. Instead of straw, however, we were told we had to mix the clay with human hair. Don’t ask me why—that’s just how it was done in the old days. So every day, we visited every hairdresser in the village to collect enough hair for our bricks.

Before we could begin building the oven, we had to prepare the base: a hole inside a circular stone wall. The hole, about 1.5 meters deep, had to be filled with a layer of broken glass to reflect the heat, followed by a layer of clay, and then a thick layer of salt—about 1,000 kg—to help retain the heat. This was covered with another layer of clay and sand. The salt was easy to obtain, as I lived near the salt mines, but for the glass, we had to visit the village's waste dump and sift through the garbage, looking for glass shards amid the rotting refuse and dead animals.

When we finally gathered enough glass and returned home, we were itching like crazy. Fleas had found their way onto our bodies, and the best thing we could do was strip off our clothes and hose ourselves down to get rid of them—both of us jumping around in a frenzied panic, as if we were drugged by some kind of psychoactive ecstasy. Bloody fleas.

Once the base was ready, we built the dome-shaped oven on top, leaving a small opening for the door. The final step was to line the floor with heat-resistant tiles and coat the inner walls with a mixture of clay and sugar to reflect the heat. Altogether, it took us three months to complete the construction. But once the oven was finished and fired up, Wolfgang was able to bake bread on a much larger scale. The oven could hold at least 15 loaves at a time, and every day, Wolfgang would take two large duffel bags filled with bread to Cusco to sell to his “gringo” clients and even to hotels. The oven was incredible: with just a few logs, we could reach a high temperature, and the next day, it would still be hot inside.

After about a year and a half, Wolfgang suddenly disappeared. We never fought, never had an argument—everything was fine between us. He just vanished, and I have never seen him again.

I still have the oven—the same one we built together—at the ranch. But it’s too large for personal use, so we only fire it up when we have many guests or for special occasions. It still works perfectly, and there isn’t a single crack in it.

It stands in the same spot where we built it more than 20 years ago.

The wood-fired clay oven is a symbol of friendship for me. If Wolfgang ever returns, our oven will still be here, waiting for him to use.