Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The 1-Hour Brick Oven

While doing some research for work today I found this example of a dry-stacked wood-fired pizza oven, and I'm dying to give it a whirl. Stacked on a pallet in the back yard we have a good collection of free-cycled bricks, and the house came with a good inventory of concrete block. We have plenty of nice dry split firewood, all ready for the woodstove, and a flat-ish spot of ground. Now all I need is the time, a few refractory bricks, and some refractory cement.

The oven designer-builder, Dale A. Callaham, built the oven pictured here in under an hour, using a chimney flue liner as the oven chamber. According to his website, the chimney flue liner cracked after a few uses, so he designed a cast oven roof using refractory cement. What a clever idea!

I'm going to skip the chimney flue-liner option and move directly to the cast refractory cement oven roof option when I try mine -- after all, I have a cement mixer, I might as well put that baby to work! The big question, can I manage this in time for a looming birthday celebration? A Pizza Party would be such a good way to celebrate, especially if it did not include the smoke detectors blaring away.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! I'm amazed at all you accomplish. I'll feel lucky if I get my seed order in before March 1!

Anonymous said...

Hi Ali, I have checked the site several times and have gone on to some of the others. My little brain is just a whirring away! I see pizza, lasagne, chicken and calzones alla woodfire in my near future!! Thank you!

Ali said...

Tracy,

Believe me, there's a lot I don't accomplish, like vacuuming, dusting, and folding laundry. And yikes, I need to get started on my seed order!

Ali said...

In addition to pizza, lasagne, calzones, think roast lamb or turkey, rustic breads, cassolet, baked beans... and sitting around the oven enjoying it over a beer!

I'm going to the masonry supply place this weekend!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I can see you guys building this cool looking cement/brick oven outside next to your new deck. Kind of like an oversized Chimnea with bricks carefully nested inside the cement housing with a cool looking chimney shape.