cuisinieres bois

[paradis]

We are seriously considering installing a woodburning stove/cooker to replace our ancient wood burner in our large kitchen, which just heats the room, to reduce our gas & electricity bills by using the cooking facilities during the winter.  We are looking at the Deville Coriandre model and would welcome comments from owners and users of this type of stove as to it's effeciency and ease of use.  Are there any recipe books for these burners or can you adapt Aga type recipes?  Is the oven temperature easy to control?  Any other comments would be helpful (good or bad) before we commit.

Paradis

[mint]

I consider our bois-charbon oven/room heater to be the single most useful item we have bought.

Wonderful for cooking all sorts of meat, baked pasta, baked fish dishes; the taste is unsurpassed.  You do need to get used to the temperature and how to control it.

I'm more or less now able to stoke it up and open up the vents for quick boiling and frying and reversing the process for gentle simmering but have not used it for baking cakes or biscuits.  I think I would try it if I didn't already have 2 other ovens that are electric.

And last week, I bought 2 stove top kettles so I now also have a constant supply of hot water for dishwashing and cleaning and filling up the hot water bottles at night.

Oh, and of course, it heats up the kitchen beautifully and you can also dry clothes in front of it.

I don't know how I have lived to my age without one! 

[Callie]

We have a Godin wood burning cuisinière which we bought over ten years ago. It had sat in an outhouse for over 25 years, unussed, before it found its way to the depot vente where we bought it.

It has a back boiler so heats water anbde radiators. Like Sweet, it's the best thing we ever bought. On cold days, it gives a warmth to the kitchen unlike anything else, and cooking on it is a dream. The newer Godins have a bigger firebox than ours, which is difficult to keep going all night.

There are days when it draws very slowly and we can't get the temperature up beyond 250 or 300. But other days, it heats up very quickly to 400°. We are lucky because we have a bottomless supply of wood, but even if we didn't, I couldn't ilmagine living without it !

[paradis]

Thank you so much for your positive comments, we hope to have the burner installed before the end of the year to take advantage of the 50% refund scheme.

Paradis

[paradis]

Hello Sweet and thanks for your information.  Can you offer any further advice as we now have the stove installed but after 3 weeks when everything was going well we had great billows of smoke coming from the fire box every time we opened it and a horrible sticky liquid running down the pipe.  Yesterday the fitter came and found the pipe was completely clogged up with a charcoal type yuck and had to dismantle it, clean it all out a sweep the chimney again.  He says the problem was caused by us closing down the vent completely which we do at night and during the day when we don't need the oven or going out.  He says to never close the vent to les than a quarter opening which means the fire will not stay in for 8-10 hours as described in the instructions, we burn more wood and the oven is always very hot.  Surely if you are not supposed to close the vent completely you would be unable to do so.  Is this a design fault?  We burn well seasoned mixed wood. Any advice/comments would be appreciated before we burn the pies and have to buy in more wood!

[andybear]

Don't forget to claim your tax rebate when you complete and submit your tax forms. If you had it supplied and fitted by a Frech aretisan you can claim back 50% of the costs!!