Winter Woodstove Warmth with Pizza

Thumbs up after one month with our new Thermorossi

If you asked me one year ago if I thought I would be completely living my inner Little House on the Prairie fantasies at 57 years old, living on the Baltic Sea smack dab in the middle of the southern Estonian rural countryside . . .

I would have been like, no way. Blank stare. At that time, so much had to still fall into place for this new “Plan E” adventure, and yet, here I am today, watching my sourdough buns bake.

Proof of Little House on the Prairie obsession: Halloween circle 1974 (Skokie, IL)

Although – spoiler alert – this is me channeling Ma Ingalls with a major dose of modern design and efficiency.

We are absolutely loving our new woodstove here at Tamme: the Margherita, an Italian made stove by Thermorossi.

This was installed just before Christmas so we’re a little over a month into it and absolutely love this stove from multiple perspectives. The stove provides both heat and, importantly, the ability to cook just about anything, complete with a cooktop with burners, oven and . . . drum roll . . . a fabulous pizza stone.

Back at Inn Serendipity Farm in Wisconsin, our woodstove there was primarily designed just for heat. While we did use the top for basic cooking, the stove was not meant for that. We also had an outdoor wood oven that we used for pizza, but that was a start-up process of several hours so was mostly something we used just use for summer parties.

This new Margherita wonderfully combines everything for us, from super efficient heat to both a cooktop and baking features along with pizza whenever we’re in the mood.

Why a woodstove?

Building on our 30+ years of homesteading experience at Inn Serendipity in Wisconsin, we focused right away here in Estonia on key elements of self-reliance living: Water, shelter, food and energy.

In the energy category when it came to winter heat, we knew we wanted to add in wood heat alongside the existing geothermal heat — and that we needed to replace the fireplace that came with Tamme with something more energy efficient. A traditional fireplace like this one, without an insert, is purely decorative. It’s inherent design causes most of the heat to escape out the chimney, the last thing you want in the winter.

Original fireplace at Tamme — not efficient or practical

Our woodstove quest led us to Kamina Kesukus, a well-stocked and super helpful shop in nearby Pärnu. Estonians smartly love their woodstoves and heating with wood, understandably as wood is so plentiful. We did bring our chainsaw from the US (because it ran on petrol -- no plug!) and even just being here half a year, John was able to cut up enough downed trees on our property for a solid winter fuel supply. Ahjuproff did a super job on the installation of the woodstove.

The total woodstove project cost 3727 Euros (about the same right now in US dollars), 2599 Euros for the Thermorossi unit and 1128 Euros for the installation. Those numbers also include the 22% “Value Added Tax” or VAT, a consumption tax added to nearly all goods and services bought and sold in and into the European Union.

We received approximately a third of that cost back, thanks to a Kredex grant. Kredex is a wider program within the European Union for incentives to do energy efficient retrofits like ours, which also covered part of our solar and car charging systems (will write more on those later). Keeps us more positive on that 22% VAT tax as it goes to programs like these. The whole Kredex process proved to be (another!) new challenge as the grant application process was in Estonian, but thanks to Google Translate and supportive agency staff we muddled through – well financially worth it in the end.

New Baking Experiences

Despite all the clear enthusiasm I’ve been sharing for our new Thermorossi Margherita, honestly, I wasn’t that convinced from the start on the whole baking feature.

More than that: I was giving John a range of excuses on why I couldn’t use a wood-fired oven for my baking needs. The temperature can’t be controlled to my specific needs. It will take too long to heat up. Blah blah blah.

But John saw potential in this stove. Between us, we negotiated and settled that he would be chief of fire management and keeping baking temperatures consistent and I would continue in bakery prep.

But once we actually got the stove and established some new routines (John is still clearly and always the fire master, affectionately nicknamed “Sparky”) with John getting the fire going every morning, I was hooked. There’s something about cooking directly with fire that goes beyond channeling my inner Ma Ingalls. We’re talking primal cave girl roots, cooking directly alongside the flames.

Not that I haven’t had mishaps! My first round of biscotti came out like little bricks as I kept them in too long for the second bake. Salvagable with a long dunk in coffee, but need work. The oven can get hot fast and quickly make things brown on the outside and “look” done, but they are not. I’m additionally learning how the oven is hotter in the back than the front and to move things around accordingly.

Also figuring out how different pan sizes work within the oven space. My first attempt at Alexander Cake (my mom’s Chicago Tribune award-winning recipe – a Latvian and Estonian cookie staple!) tasted fine, but came out like a big blog in the pan. I have to experiment more with recipe proportions – stay tuned!

My Alexander Cake was supposed to look like the left . .but first woodstove attempt is on the right. Tasted fine - working on shape!

John brought his pizza-making expertise from the Wisconsin wood oven and after a couple practice rounds and experimenting with different flours — game on! We ordered the 50 kilo bag of OO or “doppio zero/double zero” flour from Italy, very finely ground and designed for pizza. We’ve had our neighbors over for sampling and John is getting good reviews. 😊 The sweet bonus with the pizza is, unlike the large outdoor oven that is a long process to heat up, because we have the stove going we can pop a pizza in anytime.

Much more to learn and experiment with! Our challenge has been that this stove is so efficient alongside our strawbale Tamme is built so right and efficient, we’ve had to control the temperature or the house overheats, even for me who always leans to being cold. But not complaining about being a little warm in January! 😉

Check out more photos (and ordering options) from John D. Ivanko on Alamy