When the early morning shift arrives at the bakery, they don't twist a knob on the gas-fired ovens and wait 10 minutes for the ovens to heat.

Instead, the bakers perform tasks that date back to before the rise of Egyptian civilization. They scrape out the burnt remains of a fire lit four or five hours before through a brick arch. They swab down the 700-plus degree surface where the fire burned. Then they slide loaves of Two Sisters' artisan bread into the oven, which stays hot enough to bake most of the bakery's quiches, cinnamon rolls, cakes, cookies and breads, of course, for hours to come.

When the Two Sisters Bakery moved to its new location near Bishop's Beach on Bunnell Avenue in 2003, the three owners Sharon Roufa, Carri Thurman and Kate Crowley built with the future installation of a wood-fired brick oven in mind. After attending a workshop on cooking in brick ovens, the trio was enticed by both the product and the earth-friendly options the brick oven, or black oven, offered.

"It connects us with the history of baking bread," said Roufa, who arrives at 2 a.m. most mornings to clean out the oven and prepare the 40 loaves the bakery uses each day. "What it does is create the most even heat imaginable."

Last spring, the bakery held a several-days-long workshop as visiting oven-builder Alan Scott came to town from California to help them construct their oven.

"It's really based on this ancient technique of building with brick," Roufa said.

A foundation was laid to accommodate the 4-foot-by-6-foot oven's eventual weight, about 10,000 pounds. Layers of concrete were added, then insulating mediums layered in and the hearth poured on top. Perhaps the most complicated part of the construction project came when the builders had to create an arch over the hearth slab with bricks. Concrete was poured on top of that. The process took several days and everyone got to try a hand at using mortar, Roufa said.

The concrete used to hold the oven together is still curing as the moisture leaves the compound. With each firing, the oven is able to get up to temperature quicker and hold its heat longer.

Though a return to brick ovens at restaurants and bakeries has been a nationwide trend, the black oven the Two Sisters Bakery has created is especially efficient. The fire is lit in the same area the bread is baked, warming the bricks above. The bricks then retain that heat long after the fire is extinguished and the oven is cleaned out. It would take a week for the oven to cool down enough for the bakers to touch the inside, Roufa said.

In the bread world, one that Roufa and others at the bakery are passionately immersed in, there are other advantages to the brick oven. Steam from the baking loaves is caught in the oven, creating the trademark moist inside and crusty outside of artisan breads.

Another appealing factor to Roufa is that since the fire and the bread baking occur separately, there is no need for special woods such as fruit woods used by many of the newly repopularized pizza ovens.

Instead, Two Sisters Bakery is using everything slash from roadside clearing projects and slabs from local mills. For a business that prides itself on using local products as much as possible, such factors matter.

With advantages come disadvantages, though. Firing an oven is a learned art and several firings have produced an oven too hot to bake bread in that day. The oven was still over 600 degrees at 9 a.m. Monday a temperature that leaves little room for error when there are loaves inside.

"You have to be a little patient with it," Roufa said. "There are limitations you don't have with modern technology."

For those days when patience isn't enough, however, Two Sisters has something the Egyptian bread makers didn't. They can still twist the dial on that dormant gas oven.

Carey James can be reached at carey.james@homer news.com.