Pizza Oven - the first firing!

The building of mum and dad's pizza oven has been a major project for myself and my dad this year. It's been a while since we've worked on a project together and it has been great to do something and have it turn out so splendidly.

For its inaugural fire up we cooked pizzas for Christmas Eve, which I have to say were AMAZING!

Dad lit the fire early in the morning as we par-cooked the meat for Christmas Day lunch and the oven got very hot very fast.

At one point we checked the thermometer and the gauge was at the very limit (500'c) so it was probably hotter than that. Once the flames burnt down and the coals started to cool the oven got to a more normal temperature. By the time we were ready to cook our pizzas it was at 170'c so just right to pop the pizzas in.

We made one Hawaiian, one Meat Lovers and one Veggo and they were all pretty damn good. Next time we will make our own pizza bases when we have a bit more time.

The pizza and garlic bread cooking away in the oven. You can see that all the coals have burnt down and there isn't any flame. If you have a flame you will burn the back of the pizzas and need it to be a steady heat - just like an indoor oven.

The very first pizza out of our oven!

Dad got the first slice. Thanks Dad for heaps of fun building the oven :)

The Next Stage of Pizza Ovening

I was going to hold out posting this until it was fired up, but I couldn't wait.

Last weekend my dad and I finished the dome on the long awaited Pizza Oven. And while it is not yet finished (the dome will be covered by an outer wall, then we have to render and tile), it has now reached the stage where it can be used as a functional oven.

Needless to say we are all pretty excited - Mum actually bought some bubbly for the occasion.

The last steps of the dome...

As I said last time, the top of the dome is very fiddly as you have to cut all the bricks to fit and they need to hold their own weight against each other so they don't fall in when you take the inside structure down. It's a whole lot of physics that I don't really understand, but I was very glad that my dad works in engineering and has a better grip on these things.

All the bricks fit, now we can  get the mortar in

Just because you're working doesn't mean you can't have nice nails.

The last bit of mortar!

We let the dome dry overnight before removing the inside structure as we wanted to make sure it was well and truly dry and wasn't about to crack

The next day...

We got the inside structure out and the dome didn't fall down! I was pretty tense at this point so was thrilled that it worked. 

You may notice a hole above the arch though. There was one brick that wasn't quite set when we put the inside structure in and it fell out. I had every intention of patching it back up once the dome was finished. This was an INSANE decision - I did it, but with a lot of swearing and mortar in my hair. 

How stoked are we that it worked!

Inside the dome, doesn't that brickwork look professional...

Dad doing one more layer of mortar to neaten it up. We ran out not long after this, but he assures me that he has finished this rendering since then so the oven will look nice for Christmas.

It looks almost professional (I'm very proud) :D

Next update on the Pizza Oven will be the first firing!

Leave your suggestions on what to cook in it below...

Pizza Oven Weekend

Last Christmas my dad received this book from my Aunt - which I think was a not so subtle hint that she was expecting many fresh pizzas during future visits.

But my dad and I have been steadily progressing this year with building a pizza oven in their backyard. This has required a lot of heavy lifting and has taught me that I can actually lay bricks and that my dad and I work pretty well together.

We were hoping to have the main dome finished this weekend but rain set in and put a stop to our work. So we've got about 2 rows of  bricks left before we can use it as an actual pizza oven.

Saturday morning did not start off well. It had rained all night and didn't look like it was clearing up any time soon. Still - at least the view was nice.

The pizza oven was where we left it last time we worked on it. The arch had been completed and we had done three rows of the dome. But with a giant hole in the top our oven was still more of a fire pit. Dad and I crossed our fingers that the rain would clear and had a cup of coffee in the meantime.

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Mum's garden was enjoying the rain more than we were.

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When the rain cleared up we managed to get another row of bricks on the oven. The next stage is a bit more fiddly. Now that the bricks are hanging over the gap, there is too much gravity working against them so the mortar won't hold it up.

We placed a slat of mdf on some buckets and used a weak mortar to make a false dome that would hold up the rest of the dome.

This would usually take about an hour to dry, but with the weather it didn't look promising.

We prepared for more rain over night and crossed our fingers again for sunny weather on Sunday.

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Hooray! A promising sight for a days work.

The top of the dome is probably the most fiddly of all the work we've done. Each brick now needs to be cut to size in order to fit in the gap left by the last brick.

Dad working on cutting each brick to size. This process took a while and slowed us down considerably.

So this is about as far as we got by Sunday lunchtime when it started to rain again.

There is only a little hole left to fill up at the top and we will have the inside dome ready for firing. Stay tuned for the next update.

Mum's nosy chickens.