Chris

It's an old Forestry Commission labourer's cottage, built 1952. The whole house is timber built and the heating is solid fuel (i.e. wood). The fireplace in the lounge heats the water and the radiators, the Raeburn heats water only. Other houses on the plot have since converted to gas or oil tanks but this one is 'original' as the current owners are in to the whole ecological lifestyle thing ... they have an organic veg garden too.

There is a modern kitchen in the extension which is all-electric (and there is an electric immersion heater on the radiators too, just in case) but we're really looking forward to making use of wood for fuel as far as possible. The raeburn is in what is now a small additional sitting room.

Raeburn/Aga ovens are quite clever at heat regulation - ours has a built in heat exchanger which is plumbed into the heated towel rail in the bathroom. You don't have to worry what temperature it is, provided the fuel supply is constant, the temperature is constant. Each oven compartment is a different temperature - goodness only knows how they manage that - the only trick is knowing which is which. An Aga dealer might be able to tell you, or failing that just buy an oven thermometer and test it yourself. A trip to your local second-hand bookshop to find a very old cookbook would be a good idea, as what you really need, if oven baking (whether bread or anything else) are recipes that describe oven temperatures as 'cool', 'hot', 'very hot' etc rather than as gas marks or degrees.

And to come nicely back on topic, AFAIK you bake bread in the 'very hot' oven compartment, and man am I looking forward to it. I may have to give up work and bake things to sell to passing hikers on the West Highland Way instead.