Dessert Pizza

So, while still getting the feel for the brick oven cooking process, I had the neighbors over the other night for some pizzas and stromboli's.  We made 6 pizzas, Old World, Pepperoni, Sausage, Plain and a stromboli with ground turkey, sausage, pepperoni and cheese.  All came out pretty good. I had a little left over dough, so I made a desert pizza- chocolate and marshmallow,  it smelled a lot better than it tasted though.

Then with the help of my neighbor Zoe, we made another one with nutella, marshmallow and some Reese's pieces.  A few chocolate chips and a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar and the "Zoe Pizza" was made.

Special thanks to the neighbors who were test subjects...again, and to Zoe for her creativity.

More Finishing

My idea is to have the bottom done in fieldstone and the top will be stucco.  I've mortared the joints now with some black coloring added to darken it up a little. 

Then using metal studs i framed out the walls, there is a 4 inch gap between the oven cladding and the dura-rock, which will be filled with loose vermiculite.

durarock installed, next i will use metal lathe over the top to shape a dome and allow for water run off.  it will all be stuccoed as sooon as i can figure out how to do that, or have someone do it for me.

First Pizza

Had the first big fire, got hot....real hot. And just like all the other sites said, the black soot on the dome all disappeared when the oven was super hot. First pizza out looked nice, but had a couple of big bubbles in it.

The first one cooked in about 1 minute, the oven was probably a little too hot,( the floor was at 750 degrees and the dome was around 975) as the bottom was cooked, the top was cooked, but the inside of the dough not so much.  I might have to tweak my dough recipe, time will tell. As the oven cooled down, the next few came out like this one.

The first night we ended up with 4 pizzas and a loaf of well done bread.  Not too bad. I can see that there will definitely be a learning curve to this, but everyone enjoyed the product.

Now i have to get back to finishing off the oven....

Finishing Part 1

I wanted a stone look for the bottom part of the oven.  I opted for a filedstone veneer, the guy said it was like using legos- but this legos were all wacky shapes.  It took a while, but got the stone up.

I also finished off the chimney surround with red brick.

Now the family is starting to see that this is going to end up pretty cool

Starting the facade

I forgot to take a picture of making the front arch, but it was done with a simple wood form.  The Chimney pipe is a piece of Tera-Cota Flue.  Right now it is just sitting on the brickwork. Other Bricks are just layed in place, trying to get an idea of my layout.

                      The first of several small fires, helping to dry and cure oven

And the draft is working, with the majority of the smoke going straight up the chimney

More Concrete

More concrete now.  The brick work was covered in 3 layers of heavy duty aluminum foil, which has some minor insulating properties and provided a slip layer for the concrete that was poured over it.

Wire mesh for a little more support

Looks like a reactor or something.














I used some sheets of plywood and made a form around the oven.  concrete was poured around it - 3 inches on the sides and 4 or so on the top.

Chimney area

In order to close up the oven so to speak, I needed to angle bricks from the dome down to the door way angle iron.  This was done with a supporting 2x6 behind the bricks.

I also starting building part of the front facade at this time ( the red bricks )










The full bricks were mortared together and the top bricks were cut at an angle to match up with the dome and the full brick.

The sides were filled in with more bricks, creatively cut.  The outside look didn't matter, as long as the inside was relatively smooth.  Mortar helped fill in any gaps.  I also cut bricks  at an angle to provide a level surface for the chimney.