Brick Laying

[Jogeephus]

Finished the stucco tonight and had a pizza party for my daughter's friends. We cooked up a storm. About 20 pizzas total and a few other creations.

Here is the oven



This is what we called a Clamwiche and one of the pizzas.



Learned a lot tonight about pizza making in this oven. Tried several different dough combinations and hit on one that is really good. This pizza is a lot different that store bought. Very filling. Almost two slices and I was full as a tick and twice as happy.

 

[jdman1952]

Awesome job Jo, do you leave the front open when cooking?

 

[Jogeephus]

I leave it open because this is where it draws its air but I have read where you can soak your wooden door in water and place this in the opening and the steam will make a loaf of bread cook better from the steam. I'll have to experiment with that some.

Biggest thing I ran into was wanting to reach my hand inside to move a stick of wood like you would a campfire. Its sortof second nature for me but I learned right quick you don't do this with this oven. It will cook a pizza in 3 minutes. In theory, the base is sitting at 600F and the area above the partition is 1200-1300F. The mass collects so much heat that it will continue to cook for 8-10 hours after the fire is out. Plan on doing a roast in it before long. Its been an enjoyable project and my sixteen year old daughter is again thinking I hung the moon. ;-)

 

[xbred]

your oven really turned out nice..congratulations

 

[pdfangus]

this thread it happened again.....

thread topic said 23 posts...click on it and the page opened to the last six posts only....
really would like to know more about the oven and its construction....
but I cannot access the early 17 posts in the thread.....
while it is always nice to be greeted with gaprimes new avatar that is not where I wanted to start reading the thread.

 

[M5farm]

i can see all post. Jo did you redo it? the inprogress pic is different that the finished product. I don't know anything about brick ovens. where does the fire go?

 

[Craig Miller]

Thats looks good jo. And the ovens not bad either

 

[Jogeephus]

i can see all post. Jo did you redo it? the inprogress pic is different that the finished product. I don't know anything about brick ovens. where does the fire go?

Sorry, the website wouldn't allow me to post but so many photos and I had to omit a lot. Here are some I had to delete. Maybe these will help fill the gaps in the process.

The picture showing the arch is just one of the arches. I had to build a second arch which is 60% lower than the first arch which traps the heat in the top and gives a place for the chimney to vent.

Maybe this will help. Once the first chamber was formed I hade to close this up and leave an opening for the pizza scoop. I lowered the opening to about 60% of the total height to hold the heat in the chamber.



Once this was set, I made another arch but this arch was gapped in the top to allow the chimney to vent smoke. This was the most complicated part of it for me because it took me a couple of days to figure out how to make this work. I ended up cutting a jig out of some wood and placing this in the top and pouring concrete around it. See the wood jig.



Once the concrete was set, I pulled the jig out and began working on the second arch using a brick and a half distance from the wall. When I got to the chimney area I just used one brick and my arch was measured so it was level for the chimney when the pipe was put on it.




After this, I framed up around it and dumped a pile of concrete in the frame for mass for the heat collection.