The Pizza Angels!

Never do this step without help!


 Whoa--- today the oven was built!  And it was a good thing I had asked for some help because it was hard work!

Sandy, Pizza Angel!

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  My friends Sandy and Dave (my Pizza Angels)  came over to help, mixed the clay, make the "bricks," and shape the oven.

 It took pretty much about 6 plus  hours.  Sandy kept saying to me... "you were going to do this by yourself?"

Clearly I would still be out there if I hadn't had the help.  But now that it is done and we learned so much, the "next" time would be much easier.

Baking an Apple Pie in a Weber Grill

Memorial Day was a very hot day, in the 90's!  Since I had the day off I wanted to bake a pie but not heat up the house.  I thought--- maybe I can "bake" it in my trusty Homer Simpson Weber Grill?  So as with all things I thought it out and of course I thought it out a lot because I did not want to burn the pie.  Here is what I did, I used the indirect method with about 30 charcoal on each side.  Then deflected the heat from those coals both inside and on top of the grill using the halves of two pie pans.  I also elevated the pie by setting it on an inverted aluminum pie pan.  I "baked" it for about an hour and a half with the lid on.   It came out pretty good!  Try it sometime.

Finishing the oven!

I decided it was time to stop over thinking this oven and finish it!  So I took this week off to do just that! After a nice Memorial Day Weekend, remembering those who have served and died for our country, it is now Tuesday and I am shaping the oven's  void out of sand.  It will be a bee-hive looking oven--32 inches in diameter and 16 inches high.   So far I have used 6- 50 pound bags of builders sand and I am not none yet!  I had to stop because it started to storming.  But the plan is to finish the shaping today and do the the first clay layer and more tomorrow.

Mixing cement is hard!

I laid the bricks in the frame for the slab so I wouldn't have to mix so much cement.

Thought I get a little artsy here.

DONE!

First steps to the oven...

When I first started thinking of building a wood fire oven ---which was basically all the time once I decided to build it. And because it was just going to be just me building it,   I needed to do build it in a way I could handle and efficiently. First, I read  Kiko Denzer's book,  "Build Your Own Earth Oven" I also downloaded  "Building A Traditional Clay Oven."   Then signed up for a newsletter sent out by Forno Bravo. There's lots of good information online... and pictures too so it is a good idea to look at those before deciding on what kind of oven would work for you.  I decided to do the Earth Oven with a combination of bricks around the bottom half of the oven and the opening.


After determining where to put the oven, the first thing I needed to build was the cement slab, in which the plinth would rest.  If you don't know this, be warned, cement work is HARD work and the thought of possibly mixing at least seven 40 pounds bags of cement seem very daunting. So...as with each step I do when I am building things, I spent weeks thinking it out.  I decided while I building the frame to lay used bricks taking up as much area as possible so not as much cement would be needed.  I only had to mixed three bags to get my slab done!  But it was still hard work.  


Next:  The plinth!  

The Beginning...Pizza Love!

About two years ago I became obsessed with pizza. My love affair with pizza actually started as a child. My mother made homemade pizza most Fridays along with pasta fagiole. My maternal grandmother made lots of pizza in her basement kitchen on Catalina Avenue in Youngstown Ohio. She was known for her pizza a variety of what is called "Briar Hill Pizza" in Youngstown. Briar Hill Pizza uses grated Romano cheese instead of mozzarella.


 I do not make that kind of pizza, I go for the thin kind and the recipe I use is a variation of my mom's which I have to say I get a lot of compliments. I love pizza so much, that now I want to make pizza as they do in Naples. So I am building a wood fire oven by hand. This has been a process. Each step from the slab up requires me to do a lot of reading and preparing but even with that, it is not as perfect as I would like it to be. I am a producer for a TV station, I shoot, write and edit my own work. It is a job I love and do well. But I do not know too much about building things, so I take my time and do each step in my head. Now the slab is down, the plinth is built and the oven floor is laid, and I am building the form out of sand and thought this might be a good time to share my experiences.  


I'll start with pictures.

The plinth is done--- I created a space underneath to store the fire wood. 

The shelf was made by using thick  five inch wide long strips of slate from Construction Junction. 

I lined it with plastic, the bottles are for added insulation.