Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

you all seem to like your brick ovens or outside ovens, why? until i hit this site i had never seen that many before...i take it dominos don't deliver in the outback...lol but i feel its more than pizza, would someone explain it?
i think i might like one as well. if you don't have a thread about ovens could you guys post pics of your goods?

BW,
they tend to call them wood fired ovens. Pizza cooks in about 3 min. Dominos usually takes 15-20min, The beer can get hot waiting all that time. I'll see if I still got some DIY plans for one around, Ill post em up if I do. Cheers Rob

I couldn't get enough of the pizzas we had at an Ellenbrook AP gathering at Adrianwith6 place last year cooked by Adrian and his wife in their Wood Fire Pizza Oven.

Can't wait till I get my own.

No going back to Dominos for me.

Well, if you really want, you could eat Domino's or Pizza hut, or you could have Pizza.

Or, you could have a spoonfull of flour dipped in water, or bread.

I think you get my point.

However, I was reading (sorry I can't remember where), about this bloke and his wood fired oven. He cranked it up one day, cooked Pizza (real ones, not Domino's), then closed the door to trap in the heat, next day, cooked some fresh bread, cosed it up again, that evening cooked a roast, next day cooked some desert. I can't remember the specifics exactly, but you get the idea, this was all from one lot of burning wood, there was enough residual heat for several meals, and this does not take into account the amazing flavour these ovens add.

Cheers
Wazza

It not all about pizza. Your standard oven can only get to 500 degrees, and that is in self clean mode. Temps of over 900 degrees are common in wood fired ovens. Along with the flavor the wood imparts, the high temps make for fantasic crusty breads and other things that are near impossible in a conentional oven.

yea....more.... what i had thought was along the lines of not heating up the house, sorta like the BBQ that runs all summer here.

Here's a link to a home made cob oven. Looks fairy simple & easy
//small-scale.net/yearofmud/2009/09/12/build-your-own-20-outdoor-cob-oven-for-great-bread-and-pizza/
no idea how effective it would be, but i would guess people have been making earth ovens for a bloody long time.

I made a cob oven for a cottage I built. It was great only having to cut the fire wood to three foot lengths. Saved a lot of time.

Plus it was good to cook in. Roasts came out with a delicious smoked flavour.

Once though I put a three and half foot long 12"diameter loginto it when the fire was really hot. Itcaught alight instantly but icouldnt close the ovens door. The DW suggested that I pull it out a bit and cut it off with the chain saw. It worked but made a hell of a mess and even though it was her idea I was in serious trouble for some time.

I liked my mud oven (based on Kiko's book):

but my goats dismantled it for me (& I dismantled one of them )
so now it looks like this:


I hope to rebuild with brick and maybe some sort of roof. I bake most of our bread so it's great to not heat up the house in the summer & not have to pay for the propane.

OK, wait...
Here's what it looks like now:

Not sure how long the cob would have withstood all that snow.

Not having your oven fight with your AC is one reason. I'm a bit militant when it comes to heating up the house, by any source, when the AC is running.

A retained heat oven, or brick oven, or whatever, is a large thermal mass you heat up. You remove the energy source (the fire) and then cook your food. For pizza you leave a fire burning in the back so the top of the pizza is done at the same time the bottom of the pizza is done. For pretty much everything else it is the retained heat. But you still have to cook. The delivery guy brings you your food. If you enjoy making breads then a pizza is just flat bread with stuff on top. If you don't like making breads, or baking, or cooking, the oven won't magically make a pizza so superior to delivery you'd never imagine going back. Of course, it'd still be better than Dominoes or Pizza Hut. We have two pretty good pizza options where I live. They're more expensive, but at least they're edible.

Plans for a pizza oven will specify less thermal mass than a traditional European masonry oven. A pizza oven is optimized for the best pizza, but if you go on the more massive side, you fire it once and as the temperature slowly drops it becomes ideal for other foods. You start with breads, move on to fowl or roasts, then to a braise and finally you can dry stuff if that's your thing. Not that a pizza oven won't work for other foods, but like any tool it does the job it is designed for best and other jobs not as well. It's a decent sized project. You better love projects or love cooking/baking.

^^^ Warning Pizza Snobs Above ^^^

Personally - I have never met a pizza I did not like... Some are just better then others.

Well that's kind of true... and there's a story attached...

There's a well known & popular late night pizza place not far from here.. and not far from the local drinking hole... that served a pretty fair pizza, both sit down and takeaway...

And I'd frequented it often over the years...

The place changed hands... and the new owner was a surly bastard... that seemed to resent the fact that he was working at that time of night.. and catering for the particularly clientelle...

But he did introduce one new drawcard... proudly displayed above the counter, on the takeaway board, was a notice saying .. "design your own pizza"...

Well after a very ordinary pizza one weekend... I swore I wouldn't go back again... but as fate would have it... I bumped into a few old friends at the pub the following weekend and at the end of the night we headed off over to the pizza shop...

I stood at the counter looking up at the sign... and the owner asked what I wanted...

I said....

"Make me up a special mate... just grab a bit of dough, punch it around a bit, not too much.. and give it a quick roll...

Doesn't matter if it's a bit uneven, or even has a couple of lumps....

Smear a bit of tomato sauce on the base... but dont cover it with more than a thin film...

Grab a handful of cheese and just throw it on... half a dozen pieces of tinned pineapple... and a few dry old prawns..."


About this time he snarled at me..

"I'm not gunna make a pizza like that for you mate"...


To which I replied...

"Well you *frack* well did last weekend ya prick"...


I can kind of understand why he got a bit hot under the collar with me... and I think it must have been the howls of laughter from all the other patrons...

But he not only asked me to leave.. but ordered the entire establishment to leave.. and shut off all the ovens...

Just found some plans for a small DIY wood fired oven. I compressed with Winrar but might open with Win zip or similar. If that doesn't work let me know I will put it up on my FTP site.

I highly recommend Kiko Denzer's book, a great read, I'm on my second or third copy because I keep lending it out to people...



We are expecting a delivery of some outdoor ovens pretty soon...