Cooking and baking in an earth oven

By Yekbun Sudancıkmaz

Early Birds Istanbul & Outdoor School Istanbul employee and Cookbook Coordinator

At EBI, cooking and baking are not considered separate activities or exceptional projects. They are part of a learning rhythm that we return to again and again.

Once a week, the children cook or bake outside in our earth oven, even when it rains. They get to work with real tools and a great deal of responsibility. They chop, mix, wait, spill, taste, and start again. These moments are not about achieving perfect results, but about learning through hands-on experience. All four cookbooks were created from this rhythm.

It is a collection of what we cook and bake together, but above all, how we work together as a team. The recipes were created in the same way that learning takes place at EBI: slowly, attentively, and in close connection with nature. The quantities remain flexible, the steps are adaptable, and the results are never identical. Just like our children.

How do we create a cookbook with children?

The book always begins with the construction of a clay oven. First, the children dismantle the exisitng oven, stone by stone, discovering how the structure is held together. If there is no old oven, they build a completely new one. They mix mortar, build the dome, cover it with clay and straw, and finally wash their muddy feet and hands at the end of the activity. This process reflects a central belief of EBI: knowledge is gained not only by building the earth oven, but also by dismantling what has already been built into its individual parts.

The cookbook documents cooking and baking as a lived experience. Bread becomes a canvas and drawing surface, dough invites modeling, and fire requires patience and caution. Preparing food naturally combines mathematics, language, science, culture, and care. These are not separate and isolated areas, but rather parts of project-based learning.

What makes these cookbooks so special is not only that the cooking and baking takes place outdoors, but also that it follows a rhythm. The rhythm of the week and the seasons, and the rhythm of working and waiting together. Children are not passive spectators here: they are decision-makers, observers, and co-creators. Their questions, comments, discoveries, and artwork shape both the cooking process and the way the book is designed.

This is not a traditional cookbook. It does not aim to standardize the results of perfect recipes. Instead, it documents a learning method that prioritizes process over product, attention over speed, and shared experience over individual achievement.

We share this book as both a document and an invitation. A document of what becomes possible when children are entrusted with real materials, real tools, and responsibility, and an invitation to pause, cook together, and understand learning as something experienced, not something abstract.

If you would like to implement such a project, you'll find support here.