Outdoor clay pizza oven: the build begins!

This is more riveting than most vow related threads .....love it

 

I've replaced hundreds due to the British weather and that's without a fire having been sat on them.
Don't come crying to me when you have to rebuild .

 

And there was me thinking how lovely you sounded!

 

You definitely need to get out more, LOL

 

pictures of just "one" you have replaced.......

take no notice (in a bob mortimer voice) k k k katy...

 

I didn't have a camera phone in them days.

 

I bought this re-claimed pizza oven off eBay. Was very cheap but I think its because it gets too hot and everything you try and cook just gets cremated. One plus point though is that when not in use it came with a motorised curtain that covers it up. Had to have it - thought it was dead good.

 

I'm a brick layer and those bricks are too soft for repeated heating
Find some frog less bricks staffordshire blues are bomb proof


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So it rained and rained and rained on my few days off. But somehow the oven has now been built! Messed up a few times and lost a welly treading the sand into the clay, but it works!


So after 'borrowing' ten buckets of clay from a local field, we mixed it with ten buckets of sand by tramping up and down and chopping it through with a spade. It's really heavy stuff. But once you get the consistency right, we made roughly a billion clay-mix cannonballs.
Then we built a big mound of sand 80 cms in diameter and about 30 cms high in a nice dome shape - that's the oven's interior. Then covered it in wet newspaper.

Then you line up the cannonballs and mound them round and round the sand former by whacking them with the side of your hand like karate chops. Takes forever! But fun to see the surround growing. Kept the thickness to 7cms.

Done!


Cut a guide for the door. This was too low so we cut the hole wider later on so it'd take a bread tin plus loaf. Most pizza shovels, or peels, are 12ins wide so we made the width 13 ins.


Open sesame! Then you see why the newspaper is there. Reaching your hand in to scoop out the sand you know when you've hit the wall when your fingers hit the paper. The sand went on the lawn!

 

four seasons please pastrami, chicken , chorizo and peppers

 

Scoop out the sand and light a little fire to start drying out the clay. Which is hard as everything is so damp. We lit it at the entrance then pushed it back. Found that blowing down a cut length of hose pipe kept it going!

Bricks round the front with the clay mix as mortar. They protect the clay from being bashed by cooking pans. Cut a hole behind the bricks - there's probably science behind where to do it but we just guessed. A baked bean tin seemed fine as a chimney!
Then you mix another bucket of clay with wood flakes, thick sawdust really, and pat that about 2cms deep over the whole lot.
Then ANOTHER layer of the clay mix. Zzzzz.


Lots of little fires over the next few days to dry it all out before inferno temperature.


But ber-limey it works! It went beyond 600F yesterday, put too many logs in and the dome cracked a bit (and it incinerated a chicken I was attempting to roast in it) but we'll just put clay in them. Great fun and the pizzas taste pdg. Plus it's nice and warm near it as it gets dark.


Another way of warming up in the cold. Heh heh. Hic.

 

Great thread I've enjoyed following along


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Took me longer to post all the pix than to build the oven!
Trying sourdough pizza bases tomorrow lunchtime. Get over here!

 

Absolute top job! If I PM my address, can you post me a calzone? Capers, onions and a soft egg, please. TIA.

 

Nice oven well done....

Seafood pizza pour moi....yum....

 

Great job ! Put some wheels on it and tow to Techenders


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Looking top job.

 

I'm on eBay now for a Domino's pizza delivery scooter...