The Oven

Its still a bit of a mess but we have had 3 pizza events so far all succesful, this is easter this year and we are getting @ 20-25 pizzas an hour out of it. I this picture you can see the top of the oven has now been rendered, th ebrick at the right side are for the next project - the smoker oven. you can also see how the little buffetbar/herb garden is situated, the render you see on th ebottom of the herb garden is the render i will be using to finish off the pizza oven bottom.

This is me and Aunty TD, hav'n a bit of a laugh before we get started.

the bricks at the back are also for the smoker, keep a track of that blog as its going to be an interesting one as well. http://smokeroven.blogspot.com/ as its a tandoor oven as well !

I'll be creating a better structure for weather-proofing the cook of the pizza oven asap, that white frames gotta GO.

heaps of pizzas

We hd the official opening on sunday of the oven, 15 people came and we did around 25+ pizzas in 1.5 hours, it all went to plan and they were fantastic.

We made the dough and had a mix of toppings, people just chose what they wanted and we made the pizzas just for them, and to share of course.

The plan is to have a special menu board with all the families favourites and name them "the tim" , "the ruby" etc etc for we we have parties

I did a COMPREHENSIVE video of the oven from putting the wood in to having it ready for pizza so i'll get that up on youtube and post the link asap.

FIRE ! wood fired pizza oven

One of the big questions is "how much wood?" followed by how long does it take to heat up? and won't the floor be dirty? Well this post will tell you what I discovered.

This was our 4th firing and we had previousley only achieved smoke !!! seriously we just created a mess !!

On reflection it was mainly caused by 4 factors, firstly green wood, next damp wood , then being to scared to create a ROARING fire and finally not preheating the oven for long enough.

There is just no formula for how long this all takes as your oven walls may be thinner or thicker then mine, I have a tunnell shape you may have a dome, how high is your oven inside? what bricks did you use? etc etc etc so I'll just tell you what happened to us and in just 1 day we produced a great pizza and NOW have alot of information about our oven, in 2 weeks we are having the official opening and based on what we achieved yesterday I am TOTALLY confident in predicting oven and pizza times.

First thing i did was gather HEAPS of good dry wood, kindling to logs and everything in between, i would say 40kgs of wood.

I stacked the oven full with wood using the "top burning theory" which means you put the kindling at the top instead of the bottom and it just "melts' down and creates the fire with very little effort by you. .... and it actuallt works.

So with the oven stacked we started at 12.30pm and feed the fire till 2.30pm, the entire oven was a blase of flames and we stocked it as we went.

Let your fire die down sometimes and stoke it, you will be amazed that a new incredible flame appears without adding wood. Also its a good chance to rotate the charcoal produced to make sure everything turns into coals and now just black cubes of wood.

The fire continued to burn untill 3pm and I was left with alot of coals and 1 piece of a large log giving off some small .

I spread the embers all oven the oven floor and kept most of the heat where i planned to cook the pizzas,

I pushed the embers to the back and righthand side then cleaned up the area, the oven was really hot at 3.30pm when i was cleaning the floor but we didn't put a pizza in it till 4pm.

How I cleaned the floor is I pushed everything aside, gave it a brush and then wiped it with a DRY cloth wrapped around a "garden hoe" type utensil. THEN just before we were cooking I spread flour onto the floor and watched it brown, they say the speed inwhich it browns gives you a good guide to the heat of the floor, the flour browned INSTANTLY at 3.30pm so thats why we waited till 4pm, I then pushed that flour into the fire and thus you have a clean floor without ash etc. After a couple of pizzas the floor is really really clean but we had no grit in the first pizza so the system works.

What was the temperature???? Well i haven't a clue, we don't have a temp gauge that goes that hot yet so i used my hand to tell the temperature, I put my hand into the oven and counted how long i could stand it, at 2.30pm it was a milli-second, at 3pm it was 1 second, at 4pm it was 3 seconds. This drop was mainly because I was beating the fire down into hot coals.

The pizza cooked in 6 minutes at 4pm which is 3.5hours after we started and 1.5 hours after we stopped fueling the fire, although the fire was still present till 3pm.

At 5 pm it was 4 seconds and 6pm it was 5 seconds BUT at 7pm it was still 5 seconds so the drop in heat was slowing down, 8pm 6 seconds and 9pm 7 seconds.

I think that we would have been best to cook the pizzas at @ 5.30pm instead of 4pm, we wouldn't get a 6minute pizza but we feel we would get a better crust and more even cook, plus the pizzas would be considtant over a longer period of time

And here is the pizza, a work of art !!

Of course after the pizzas there are still more uses for the heat, like great bread.

Vermiculite dry

heres a close up of the vermiculite a week latter, its small beads with some loose on top, i don't think it would stand up to bad weather so i'm going to pop some concrete ontop and then render it a colour.

Vermiculite Layer

Put the vermiculite/cement mix on, next week I'll cement render over it and that big grey side wall.

I found heaps of different ways of what you should do with the vermicement but this is what i did (which was one of the suggestions) in your wheel barrow put in 6 ten litre buckets of vermiculite, then toss through 1 ten litre bucket of cement until its thoroughly mixed, then using a watering can with a sprinkler rose slowly add water until it all becomes workable/tacky , this for me meant that i could pick it up in a hand ful and not have it crumble.

What actually happened was it took alot more water then i thought to achive this, @ 15+ litres. THEY all say to be careful with adding the water as you do not want to much.

Anyway, i then shoveled it ontop and smoothed it out, they all say don't squash it so at times balls of it ran off like little dung-beetle balls.

what i did was get my square trowl and hold it "downhill" so as i smoothed it down the side i also blocked it from falling off. The bag of vermiculite i bought still has @ a third left in it.

The clay layers have been cold to touch when firing the oven so this layer seems pointless but it was the plan !!

Chimney views

Its hard to tell but there are bricks up there, photo below.
sorry about the white frame, its just a quick way to throw a shelter over for me on hot days.


















heres the top view of how th ebricks go through the corrigated roof.

Chimney finished

To complete the chimney I have to make it thinner and cut a hole in the pagola roof to allow a layer of bricks through, the reason is the chimney pipe is going to be hot and the roof is fibreglass/plastic so at least a few bricks will allow me to put in some weather proofing around it without it melting as well as the roof.

So thus I have to put a round pipe into a square hole and seal it, I figured if I put a piece of metal to hold the pipe and bricked it in I could then pour mortar into itwhich will hold the chimney straight andforce the smoke into the pipe, and thats what image yo see here, the pipe is 15cm across so i just drew a circle, cut out some lines and bent the thing back.

Here it is inside the chimney bricks, it was hard to get good shots as i'm up a ladder and the front beam blocked a front-shot being taken, i just built those bricks up through that gap and filled it.

top clay finished

I've completed 3 layers of clay at the top so thats about 80mm thick.

Next week I'll lay a nice smooth dome of vermiculite/cement to finish it off.

pizza oven front stage 3

A close up of the final result, looks great I think, and a shot of it with the buiffet/herb bar infront.

Can you believe it but today was a TOTAL fire ban !!!!

Any it was 37 degrees C , so it was to hot to get on the roof and cut a hole for the chimney.

pizza oven front stage 2

I used the mold from the inside of the oven for the final arch out front, i had to cut a little of the sides as i did the double brick supporting walls which made that arch a couple of cm's thinner.

Then just supported it with bricks.

i laid the 2 side bricks with mortar but after that I just mortared the back of the brick where it hits the chimney and then spilt/pushed mortar down the gaps as there wasn't any space, kind of like "pointing" the bricks, then i just pushed mortar in the fron joints and took the mold away after 1 hour.

The arch stayed up and i was able to fill in any gaps with a kind of rendering technique.

Pizza oven front arch - stage 1

So you can see here the progression of that horizontal support I put in, it probably has no real value but it doesn't hurt. I created the front arch walls with a slopping brick at the top to help reduce the gaps the bricks will have in them to create the arch. I left this for a couple of days to strenghten .

I also added a few more levels to the chimney, i will now reduce its width and take it through the roof, once through the roof I will place in a metal chimney pipe.

Here you can see the herb garden and the oven together, its going to be great to have an extra shelf to place pizzas on from in and out of the oven.

heres a close up, its just a brick rectangle with a hole in it, the base concrete slab also has a hole in it and the inside is cover with thick black plastic to stop moisture going out through the bricks.

That ugly front side mortar you see there will be hidden once I place the calapsable side wooden benches onto the bricks, calapsable so they don't take up space when not in use but that extra shelf space will be great come party time.

First pizza

Well the first pizza was a bit of a disaster, the base didn't cook and I think the reasons were : I built the fire to the right only so to keep the floor as clean as possible so those base bricks never got that intense heat to begin with and secondly I didn't pre-heat the oven for long enough ( i don't have a temp gauge yet) so it took 20mins for that pizza to be eadible.

funnily about an hour later would have ben the time to cook the pizza.

live and learn, i'll do more experiments to get it right, thats half the fun!

Terracotta front of pizza oven

FINALLY got the terracotta pavers i wanted for the front, these tiles have holes running through them thats why I cut the side ones at 45dg so i get flush ends

My front is now all the one level for smooth entry to the oven.

Now all i need do is create my front arch whihc the sides will sit ontop of the pavers so from the front you will not see any of the back of the oven

Second burn

A much more intense fire and for longer this time, once again movig it around inside to heat up all areas of bricks.

It really looks GREAT, this is what all the work is about, the smell of that fire, the warmth, and the future pizzas !!

still got the front to finish but that won't be long.

First burn

Well we finally lit a fire !!! yippee, only a small one but gee it looked great, and the good thing is the smoke did what it should and went up the chimney and not out the front of the oven.

I moved the fire all around the oven to season the mortars and i kept it going for 3 hours only

chimney going UP

SO the chimney is now making its way up, above it is some corrugated clear roofing which it has to go through.

I have a few options as to when i stop the bricks and then put in the round galvenised iron chimney pipe so i have decide to take the brick trhough the roof and then add the pipe, the main reason is the pipe might get hot and melt the roof but the bricks will be a better insulator. I then need to simply water proof the around the chimney. +++ it should look good.

I need a tall chimney as the neighbours garage is 2 storeys high because they are uphill from us, if i don't take the chimney up high the smoke may just end up coming back down onto us. yes smoke can travel down.

clay cracks

As i expected the clay cracked ( as i had done tests) but no big deal, before laying the next layer i poured some fine runny clay into the cracks.

one thing i haven't done yet and that is feel if any heat is getting out when i have the fire going.

Clay topper

So now what i will do is a few layers of clay, really only because i have LOADS of it from the excuvation of the site. I researched a millllllionnnn different way to do this, there were mixing it with sand and testing its elasticity/shrinkage, mixing it with cement, mixing it with vermiculite, grinding it down into a powder before adding water etc etc and in the end i came to this conclusion....

The clay is not in contact with flame, it isn't inside the oven so its not going to crack and fall into a pizza, its purely another layer of "something" to help keep the heat in SOOOOO, i decided to use the "African in the middle of nowhere" method....

which is.... wet it squeeze it and slap it on.

I'll be doing 3 layers letting each dry beofre adding the next and finally adding a vermiculite/cement layer that will create a smooth arch over the entire dome which we will render a colour.

you can see here i have not placed clay onto the side cement walls, the clay will be encased inside the ver/cerment which will help with weather proofing (even though it is under cover

more clay action next post

cleaning inside the pizza oven

If you know a jockey then have them come help clean the inside of the oven !! the door is @35cm sq thus @ 50cm diagonal and my shoulders are 54cm across, I have to jimmy up the ladder backwardsslide my arm in with 1 shoulder then pull my other arm in. Sounds easy !!! but I stretched a muscle and got a cramp whilst inside, i couldn't get out and thankfully it subsided but it wasn't pleasent.

The other thing is I have cleaned the inside as I have gone, not leaving it to the last minute so this last clean shown was only the drop and side bricks. Keep cleaning them bricks whilst the front area is open.

I suggest you "blind clean" the inside front, meaning just stick your arm in and scrub, then go inside and do the bits you can see, I ran a small table light into the oven so i could actually see.

All i used was a scourer and water and then a cloth to wipe the muck off. it really only took me 10 minutes to finish it off.

Herb garden / buffet bar

In this image you can see the top of the buffet/herb bar across from the pizza oven, it will make a great little spot to put it and bring out pizzas to. that bottom right hand side of the image is a hole full of dirt that goes straight down to the ground and we will be planting herbs in that area, the interior of which i have lined with heavy duty plastic that gardeners use behind retaining walls, you'll find it leftover on alot of building sites.

Won't it be great to just before you slid your pizza into the oven you pick some fresh basil, tyme, rosemary or sage? (yes i know you can't plant them all together but you get the concept !) the herbs is not my responsibility its the girls.

Side cement finished

Well you can see here its a real building site, most of those bricks you see are for the second part of the project...the smoker oven. you can see here the form work is removed and note the blue patch on the top of th eoven, thats where we are putting the clay.
The top view shows you the concrete surrounding the walls of the oven, i have leveled it off where the dome starts to curcve in, i'm going to place a layer of clay on that blue insulation leaving space at the sides to then do a final coat of vermiculite/cement over the top of the dome. I'm using the clay simply because I have alot of it from the original excuvation of the site and its good clay so why not use it !!

That clay will just add an extra depth of insulation to the top of the oven, and help to create a nice shape, the vermiculite/cement will then top it off and we will render the whole thing in some yet to be decided colour.

Heres a close up of the side, you can see here there are some hole which i will fill in with a cement mix, the problem happened when i started the form work and miss calculated the amount of cement needed for the job, it was a hot day and i had to drive out and get more gravel, by the time i got back the cement was almost set so there is layers, you can see, i the walls. I hope that snippet saves someone the hassle i had/have. should be fine though.

Another note is one i made in my last post about having your form work SOLID, as you will need to shove the concrete down to make sure you don't end up with gaps and holes once you take the form work away.

wool insulation

hen i added some wool insulating, i used foil backed wool out of 2 hot water heaters, I got it from a scrap metal yard as they don't care about the wool so it was FREEEEEEE, i then covered it in housing insulating foil which is CONSTANTLY disgarded at building sites so do NOT pay for it. then chicken wire which once again people through out constantly, i've added some reo on the sides and back just to be overly secure but thats optional.

heres a view from the top once the "form work" is around the oven, next week i will just pour concrete down the sides , i'll be adding some left over fondue but thats just becuase i want to use it up.

PLEASSEEEEEEE, make sure your form work is TOTALLY secure, make sure it can;t move top and bottom, "kick it" and if it moves then you should do something about it.

WOW, its really starting to look like i can cook something now. well actually i can but its best i have been told to be patient and season it gradually, kinda like a car, the better its run in the better it will work for you.

Chimney start

heres a top view-ish , you can see how the leveling off has create the start of the chimney and it all looks good and straight.

what you don;t see here is that the front side of the chimney is actuallt going to be suspended across that front wide gap and not the front arch.

NOTE: i've made a little mistake here so do not take this image as design as i have to cut a couple of bricks to get it all setup for the next step. detailed in a later post. but you get the idea.

creating drop to chimmey transition

I showed you a mock up image in the last post so here you can see it completed, basically I have made the angled drop back to a level area to build the chimney onto, at the back of the "mess" . you really need to keep this tidy as when you do the next stages you want ot make sure there is no gaps that air can gather in, i read this can cause explosions? with air heating up? anyway.....just fill it all in and keep it square and it should be easy to

heres the front view, you can see the supporting angle iron (refer to mock-up image in previous post) and I have secured the angle iron "downward" pressure by placing bricks in the chimney section infront.

you really need to make sure as you build your chimney up that the weight is being forced down into the correct direction.

heres a close up of that support, i had to shove alot of mortar into that jiont becuase i didn't cut the bricks myself, but you can see here how that works and it will be a great support for the chimney. the smoke will also be drawn backwards as it exits the oven and hopefully stay on the inward side of the chimney ensuring no smoke goes out the front area and THUS keeps that area clean.

Finishing the drop

Further to the last post you can see i have cut a brick to fit into that angle slot, 2 whole bricks will go infornt of it to complete the oven seal.


heres the mock up of what i intend to do, i feel it is important at this stage that you know where your chimney is going to go and HOW you expect to level off that angle. this is a great website with good images http://www.villagok.dk/brickoven/july2005/july2005.html , scroll down to the image of his "drop"


I happen to have picked up for free some already cut angle bricks so i am using them.




the inside after its all closed up (not cleaned) but you can see how that simple side arch with 2 bricks in fornt makes a good seal, the IMPORTANT thing for me has always been not to have areas that can hold ash and then eventually drop into your food, this design i think achieves that.

the front stage finished up to the stage of laying out the bricks to suppot the chimney which will run along the top of the drop.

just need to clean inside and i can start seasoning it ready for the first pizzas.

Oven Drop - extensive explaination

This is a longgggg post with heaps of images as i feel its needed, this was a difficult thing to work out, funnily it was only after I worked it out I started to find good info on it.

Well basically , at the front of your oven you want to drop the smoke down and thus it will want to go up again QUICKLY thus the "draw" from you chimney will help that and the assumption then is that you end up with a clean fron of oven as no smoke comes out the front ++++ that smoke "pocket" holds heat rather then letting it go straight away thus giving you oven a more effecient use of the wood. I think thats the concept?

so here are some images for you to look at what i did, there are millions of ways but you might get the basics.

here's the concept, you have your front bricks of the oven but you leave the roof short so you can place slanted bricks to create the "drop" at the oven door. allow for mortar depth.

you can see here i just cut the bricks with a angle grinder, i only have a few to cut. To work out the angle use pythagoras theorem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem , you will need to use it in the "negative" spaces not the brick, meaning it is used to work out the cut-out piece not the end brick.

This is what it looked like before creating the drop, that small angled brick on either side is actually a 1/3rd of a brick, the reason is simply to use as much of the space i had available

I videod this and will put it on youtube asap, then insert the link here:

here's the pre-drop mortaring the bricks prep, i have 2 small arch supports on either side.

here i have put the first arch bricks in and started the drop angled bricks, using fondue.


a more front view for you.
I found the mortar dries REALLY quick so those arch bricks held themselves up within 10 minutes !!!

heres the 5 middle drop bricks, you can see i'll need to place some front bricks and the last left/right-arch brick in, these bricks will need to be cut to order.

The inside (not cleaned up) there are better shots coming later on in this blog as I close up the oven.