Rustic Ovens

Here is the first fire for cooking. We had an interruption during the night, so we are not having a traditional Easter dinner. Instead, we are having pizza and then I am cooking my first bread in the wood fired brick oven. Hope it goes well. This is my very first effort. After the pizza, I will cook a couple of boule. For those that knew as little as I did a few weeks ago, that is a French ball. I had some dough left over from a few days ago when I made some in the kitchen oven. I shared one of the loaves with Tammy and her fellow workers. Got a good report. I am most anxious to try the wood fired oven. Notice the smoke in the picture. I need a taller chimney.

The five log burn is underway. It will take several hours because they are not all burned at once. Three are burned at first and then the coals spread around and the other two are added. So far, the highest temperature has been about 350 degrees at the top of the oven. I am not sure what it was under the coals. Maybe I will find out today when I move the coals around.

Here is one of the early pictures in the building process. As you can see, we poured a concrete slab, laid bricks on edge and then put fire bricks down for the cooking surface. Notice that the bricks are diagonal to the door so that when the pizza peel is used to scoop up a pizza, it will not hit an edge of a brick. Instead, it will slide across easily.