UKC

Looking into ways of making living a couple of months in a tent more comfortable, and figured having the ability to easily bake bread and things, make pizza, etc would be quite useful and an improvement over having just a couple of gas stoves and pans. Pretty sold from what I've read, except on cost!

Does anyone have one and have any thoughts? Or alternative/better suggestions?

I have an old, large, metal paint tin with a grate (made of steel mesh) about a quarter of the way up and a few air holes below. Put charcoal or smokeless fuel in and let it burn. That could easily be converted into a cooker with an extra shelf and lid.

Or just buy the thing

You can put two 12 V, 17 Ah AGM batteries and a basic soar charge controller in a cheap, waterproof leisure battery box.  Cable gland seal flying leads for solar panels on it, and add panel fit voltmeter and a pair of cigar lighter sockets.  Get 1-2 semi-flexible 100 W solar panels.  These panels are light weight and could be pegged to the ground or to a crude frame for better pointing.

Bingo - mobile power station that will run a 24 V trucker’s oven and and a small mains inverter or whatever for charging duties.

Probably cost 2x-5x a Cobb but it does more stuff.  Obviously a no go if you have to pack stuff in from far away.

I've got one, and it's a good piece of kit, very economical on fuel. Quite heavy. I've never baked with it so I can't advise on that. If using for conventional barbecuing of meat etc. it doesn't have that big a capacity, so don't expect to feed too many people at once with it. 

I thought this was a thread with recipes for swan.

I have one I gave to my parents- they used it a couple of times: a bit time consuming but works was there verdict. 

Make me an offer!

I had one of the earlier models and to be honest I thought it was 'okay' at best. The gas burner itself I thought was underpowered and all the griddle/frying pan add ons were a sod to clean. Also the whole oven, pizza, bake bread thing, be honest, are you really going to be faffing around making bread and pizzas when the reality is that you will probably just end up buying a loaf of bread from the camp shop or supermarket. Looks like they have completely upgraded their range though so things may have improved a lot since I had mine several years ago.

To he honest the best thing I bought was a cast iron Fokker catering gas burner, its not something you pop in a rucksack and take to the hills but for use as a camp stove its awesome insofar as heating a pan of water or stove top coffee pot in a few minutes or getting a wok to proper temperature.

I'm looking at the charcoal version rather than the gas, which gives scope for more 'oomph'. I could see myself making pizza and similar things on a reasonably regular basis over the course of two months. Proper bread maybe not, but soda bread, flatbreads, flapjack/fudge/hill snacks, etc...they all seem like great possibilities that I'd love to investigate. Most food I cook at home is also baked or roasted, and so being able to cook more like how I usually cook would be good.

Yet another variety of stew or pasta on the Trangia gets old quickly. It's fine for a week or two, tops, but for any longer I want the ability to cook properly, and ideally with little faff. Currently I feel limited in what I can whip up with a couple of gas stoves, saucepans and frying pan. One thing which can BBQ and smoke, fry, roast, and bake seems like a good addition to the stove/cooking collection.

yhm

I have a small Webber Smokey Joe BBQ as well in the back of the truck.

How much will a stove + fuel cost?

How much will a daily roll / pizza cost?

Going by a figure plucked out of thin air (well, my last visit to Flo's pizza van in Ailefroide), a takeaway pizza would be about 10E. Stove £145 without additional accessories, fuel...I can't imagine a bag of briquettes would be bank-breaking, so let's say £200 all-in? Or about twenty takeaway pizzas.

When you put it like that, it almost sounds like good value.