Brick Oven Blog

Breadmakers

2011-04-24T00:58:00.000-07:00

We've finally done it! After years of procrastination we finally took the plunge into breadmaking. Months of experiment have led to our family developing good baking skills. Today we lit the oven and tended it until it was just right. The fire was pulled out and the floor cleaned before two plain loaves of bread, a chorizo mozarella and oregano scroll, a pumpkin and thyme scroll, and an apple and rhubarb pie were placed in. We enjoyed the fruits of our labour with pumpkin soup. marvellous!

Pizza perfection

2010-02-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

I confess. I have slack blogging periods. The Christmas holiday period has been one. It has been in my mind for weeks to blog the best pizza session ever. After a month I finally got here! For Christmas our family decided to have a gourmet food festival with each family member contributing something to the festivities. We kicked this off on Christmas Eve with a feast of barbecued delights including fantastic ribs with chipotle barbecue sauce and home-made gozleme. On Christmas morning we kicked on with our usual alfresco barbecue breakfast. It just went on from there as each of us prepared a variety of wonderful dishes to delight and nourish.

One of the high points of this festival of indulgence happened the day I lit the pizza oven. It was quite a warm day but not as hot as we had been experiencing, and there was no total fire ban. I lit the oven early and kept a pretty large fire going for about 4 hours. By the time we got to cooking the oven was the hottest it has ever been. I discovered the following day that I had actually broken our little oven thermometer.

We started with our usual roasting tray of lamb chops. These cooked perfectly in less than two minutes and were gobbled up as soon as we could physically touch them. Next I put in some gozleme our girls had made using leftover fillings from Christmas Eve. This was a mistake as the yoghurt in the gozleme dough burnt quite badly. They tasted really good however once the burnt bits were cut off.

That evening pizza was definitely the star of the show. Jenni and Luke made a batch of pizza dough and took great care to roll out the thinnest crusts possible. Using a variety of toppings we ended up baking at least 12 fantastic pizzas. Luke even managed a cheese stuffed crust pizza. With the incredible heat of the oven these pizzas cooked perfectly in no time and all tasted wonderful. The final pizzas were topped with pear and chocolate and with apple and cinnamon.

This night has entered the annals of our family food legends.

A nice lump of dough and the fires of hell

2009-08-30T01:17:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day - it's spring and the daffodils are smiling at us. I have finally worked out a good pizza dough recipe and, regardless of an appallingly windy and rainy night I set out early to build a fire in the oven. We've had more rain and I knew that the oven would need drying out. I built up to a big fire that gradually heated the oven to well over 200 degrees celsius. I made a huge batch of dough and we ended up cooking eight pizzas followed by a very nice dessert pizza with chocolate and almonds topped with slices of pear - mmmmmmmmmmm.

I kept the fire burning into the evening to keep the structure drying. Life is good.

A winter oven meal

2009-07-24T00:52:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I fired the oven for the first time in months. We have had shocking weather and the oven was cold and wet. I lit a slow fire early and just kept it going all afternoon while I prepared foods for the oven. I planned to do spinach pide, roasted eggplant, tandoori chicken and roasted potato wedges. The pide were filled with a fragrant mixture of spinach, onion, garlic and spices that I had prepared earlier. I made a batch of dough for them that worked perfectly, although I rolled it a little thickly. That batch of dough has now made me hunger to bake bread.

The pide cooked well but in the freezing cold evening the oven seemed to lose heat rapidly. I guess it was a combination of moisture and the cold air. It reminds me that I need to supplement the insulation. The tandoori cooked alright but not as quickly as it should have. We finished off the eggplant and roast wedges in the house oven.

Am I a bad oven person? I need to do some maintenance.

One oven and a small feast!

2008-12-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

Eleven people, a gorgeous summer evening, one oven and a small feast!

What a pleasant evening! Victorian red wine, Tasmanian beer,Tooraweenah olives, lamb cutlets, haloumi cheese, frankfurts in dough, and (did I forget?) - PIZZA.

Oh yes, six pizzas to be precise. One pizza with garlic, chorizo, dried chilli, olives, anchovies and provelone, A cabanossi and pepperoni pizza, two vegetarians with gorgeous bocconcini, baby spinach and tomatoes, AND two calzone stuffed with goodness.

The lamb cutlets were an entree - roasted in garlic, olive oil, rosemary and thyme. The haloumi was just thrown into a cast iron skillet and roasted in the oven.

Who wouldn't have a brick oven for Christmas?

More tapas

2008-10-05T19:40:00.000-07:00

Last night we cooked tapas again. A nice enjoyable meal enjoyed outside in the balmy evening of the first day of daylight saving. The oven had trouble holding heat last night. I guess it's reminding me that I need to finish off the additional insulation layers I have been planning.

Good pizza

2008-07-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

Another day, more friends, more nice cooking. Yesterday we lit the oven again and prepared to cook pizza for friends. Four pizzas were planned:

Empanadilla pizza - we used the leftover empanadilla filling of mince, chopped chorizo and olives as a base topped with sliced chorizo and tomato. This was very nice.
Tandoori chicken.
Vegetarian with baby spinach and bocconcini.
Meat lovers - cabanossi, pepperoni, chopped ham.

After this delicious repast and some very nice South Australian Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot we baked an apple pie for desert.

Even with the threat of snow in the air we sat outside near the oven and had a wonderful time!

Apple pie

2008-07-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

A few times this year we have had pizza evenings with friends. We seem to have settled into a pattern with our garlic prawns cooked in pots or ramekins using green prawns, crushed garlic and butter, followed by a nice range of pizzas with varied toppings.

We have been finishing off the evenings by cooking a large apple pie in the cooler oven. As we have munched on our pizzas we've just placed the home-made apple pie in and taken it out at our leisure. Jenni uses short crust pastry as a base and fills this with pre-cooked apple that was prepared in early summer. The apple is topped with sugared short crust pastry.

The museum at which we volunteer has a wild growing apple tree that fruits prodigously. The apples are an old variety somewhat like a Gravenstein and cook beautifully.

It is a wonderful feeling to pull a pie made with apples we have gathered from an oven we have built ourselves.

Tapas

2008-07-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about doing tapas in the oven for a long time and today was the day. We had friends over so I spent a few days planning a menu, sauces and marinating things ready for cooking. The following dishes were cooked in the oven:

Garlic chicken wings - These were prepared by jointing chicken wings and marinating them in olive oil, crushed garlic, chilli, paprika and onion. They were cooked in the big roaster for an hour and came out smelling and tasting wonderful.
Smoked cod in chilli tomato sauce - A sauce was pre-cooked using red onion cut into wedges, sliced garlic, chopped red chilli and tomatoes. A fillet of smoked cod was flaked and mixed into the sauce in a cast iron pot just before cooking. A lid was placed on the pot and it was put in the oven to heat through. This was fantastic.
Potato wedges - medium potatoes cut into wedges that were tossed in a mixture of olive oil, crushed garlic and sea salt. After about 30 minutes in the oven they came out looking and tasting perfect.
Empanadillas - little parcels made from rounds of dough stuffed with a mix of pre-cooked mince, chopped chorizo sausage and chopped red chilli.
Roasted chorizo slices - slices of chorizo sausage roasted in a cast iron frying pan.
Button mushrooms with chilli and garlic - button mushrooms placed into the oven in the pan in which the chorizo had been roasted with crushed garlic and chopped red chilli.
Roasted chorizo slices - slices of chorizo sausage .

These dishes were accompanied by a simple sliced tomato and basil salad and a salad of roasted zucchini slices in chilli and basil.

After a few continuous weeks of rain the oven was a little difficult to warm up. The insulating layers and brick arch wept a lot after I lit the fire. The structure eventually dried out and heat up.

Everything cooked beautifully. We brought some new cast iron cookware that worked like a charm and the big roaster was just right for the chicken wings. It was nice just sitting around pulling batches of varied foods out of the oven and devouring them as we sat in the cool winter air.

I love my oven!

2008-03-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

What a great day! The family is home for Easter and we fired up the oven. At the end of two weeks of absolutely wonderful autumn weather the weather has changed and we now have classic Easter weather - a cool misty day.

I lit the oven at 9:00am to heat it gradually and started cooking at about 12:15pm with a temperature over 300 degrees Celsius. The first thing in was the lamb cutlets with thyme and rosemary. Delicious a usual. These were followed by some great pizzas (I think we've mastered these now), a bottle of Western Australian Cabernet Merlot and garlic prawns. The garlic prawns were so good!! We'll have to do tapas some time soon.

I just want to embrace that oven. I've worked out the temperature, the cooking process, and how not to get burnt. It's wonderful!!!

More pizzas

2008-02-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

Last night we had friends around for dinner. There were nine adults and four children all up. I fired up the oven in the afternoon and we got ready for pizza. We used some old favourites but also tried a Satay Chicken pizza and a prawn pizza. Jenni had the briliant idea of buying pizza trays to make the loading process easier. This took a lot of the stress out of transporting the fresh pizza bases. We had three trays that we rotated in and out of the oven. Everything cooked beautifully and I had a lovely time shovelling pizza in and out of the oven. I felt like I was running a restaurant!

The Satay Chicken was simple - a fresh pizza base, bottled satay sauce spread on top and thin strips of chicken breast laid over. We added some baby spinach and cheese and cooked away. Yum.

For the prawn pizzas we bought frozen green prawns from ALDI. The defrosted prawns were put over tomato paste and mated up with snow peas. A topping of mozzarella and they were yummy. It was nice watching the prawns pink up in the oven.

Burns

2008-02-03T18:24:00.000-08:00

Guess what! Wood fired ovens get really hot! AND when you touch them you get burned!

My family jokes that hair singeing is a regular part of my brick oven cooking repertoire. It's lucky I have a No.2 cut as it's easy to repair when the front of my hair gets singed by the superheated blast coming through the oven door. I suppose that's an advantage of having a flue.

I use leather boilermaker's gloves when working the oven but I still occasionally touch something hot. I gave myself a corker of a burn the other week. We had friends over and were roasting whole fish in the big roaster. We had also decided to try tandoori chicken (see previous post). It was a hot day and I was only wearing a short-sleeved shirt (had pants on too). While trying to wedge the skewers in the oven I accidently touched the inside of the doorway arch with my forearm. Whoa!! Did that hurt. I had a nice trapezoidal-shaped burn that took a few weeks to heal.

Long-sleeved cotton shirts are definitely the go now - even if it is a scorcher of a day.

Tandoori

2008-01-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

Our neighbour went fishing the other day and passed some beautiful Parrot Fish and Bream over the back fence for us to enjoy. After a very successful baked dinner on Sunday we decided to cook the fish in the brick oven and invite friends around to share with us. We ended up with seven people and the fish were not going to be enough. By coincidence we were watching Food Safari on SBS the other night. This week's episode featured the food of Pakistan and had some enticing examples of people cooking tandoori at home in wood fired tandoor ovens. We decided to try tandoori chicken in our brick oven.

Jenni marinated chicken breast and thigh then fixed it to long skewers. I then wedged the skewers between the arch and the floor of a hot oven. This is where our rough oven bricks came into their own as there are plenty of gaps and crevises in which to wedge the skewers.

The chicken cooked beautifully and had that authentic wood-fired tandoori taste. It even had the carbonation one associates with wood-fired tandoori. We had a very pleasant evening of al-fresco dining with gorgeous oven-baked fish and succulent tandoori chicken. We'll be doing that again!

Christmas Eve 2007

2007-12-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

We had friends over for dinner on Christmas Eve. The oven was fired up early and fire kept low initially. After I cranked it up later in the afternoon the oven got up to over 230 degrees Celsius. That was fantastic! The first thing to go in was a roaster with lamb cutlets. The lamb cutlets were laid on foil and sprinkled with rosemary and thyme from the garden. Some crushed garlic and olive oil were added. They were fantastic and a great entree. After them we just started pumping the pizzas through. We used some of our previously prepared pizza bases and some bought bases. A good variety of toppings made a very nice banquet. The beer holders performed superbly.

Another firing

2007-10-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. We are slow and Oh so boring. Why haven't we fired the oven again. It's just life. Life gets in the way and stops us from stopping to enjoy our little treasure. Well we fired it up again on Saturday 20 September. Springtime - the daffodils in bloom and everything feeling nice.

I got a good fire going and we started to cook. There was a major malfunction as the dough making crew changed recipes. It started out as a disaster but eventually worked out. Was it because we hadn't made the sign of the cross over the dough when it was being made? (As suggested by the Italian woman who proposed the new recipe.) Things got into swing and we pizza'd ourselves out. I have really grown fond of Provelone as the ideal pizza cheese - yummo.

We set up a baked dinner for later in the day - a whole chicken and roast vegetables. We put it in, bricked the doorway up and left it for two hours. we should probably have left it for more and not bricked the oven up. Everything was too moist and the chicken was too big - it didn't really cook as well as it could have. We're still learning and we still need that extra insulation.

Hmmmm. I'll have to get onto that - when life slows down a bit.

Anchovy delight

2007-08-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was keen to make a pizza without a tomato base and with anchovies. This one was nice.

I sliced some Provelone cheese and laid it on a pizza base. I then added slices of marinated eggplant, anchovies and olives. It looked good, cooked good and tasted great!

2nd bake 12 August 2007

2007-08-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Sunday morning we decided to have a family day. The oven was lit again (see 'The gentle art of fire watching') and we set about making tasty treats in a more leisurely way than the day before.

We are learning how to handle the dough and the pizzas and everything else. I started with my own anchovy delight and we also loaded in a Gallipoli pide. The younger girls wanted to do some hot dogs the way Prezel World do them and Phoebe decided to make some pretzel twists using a chapati recipe. The chapati twists were fine, if a little fat.

We then went on to cook about half a dozen pizzas. Luke worked the dough in the kitchen - he's turning out to be the dough man. Ingrid and Jenni chopped and everyone else made pizzas. We had a great time.

In the afternoon Jenni made a Chelsea Bun and also marinated some chicken breasts. Late in the afternoon I pulled the fire out. We put in the Chelsea Bun and the chicken was laid in the roasting tray and set in the oven. I closed the door up with pavers and we just let it cook. The chicken was wonderful - slow roasted and tender. Yummy. The chicken and a light salad provided the perfect foil to our lunchtime pizzas.

The gentle art of fire watching

2007-08-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

Fire is a living thing and, like any other living thing, it needs to be nurtured.

Nothing I read about brick ovens told me HOW to lay a fire. I suppose everyone has their own preferred method. I've always been good at lighting fires and can get a campfire going from almost nothing, however I found lighting fires in the oven problematic. I finally worked out a way to lay a fire so it gets some heat before it goes out.

I set the fire up using a fire lighter at the base, surrounded by small pieces of kindling set up like a teepee. On either side of this I lay a reasonably sized piece of wood aligned front to back in the oven. These larger pieces serve two purposes, they channel air into the fire from the oven door and also act as a stable stand for large pieces laid on top of the kindling. This method is working extremely well.

Yesterday morning my daughter Phoebe and I set the fire then placed chairs in front of the oven to watch it as it built up. It was lovely sitting in the spring sunshine with a book each, reading as the fire gradually built up in front of us. Every now and then I gave it a poke, moved it around the oven or added more wood. It was very nice.

First bake 11 August 2007

2007-08-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

Today we revved the baby up for the first baking. It was a windy day so the smoke went everywhere. We had a fire going for two hours and a little oven temperature gauge kept us informed of oven temperature. We got up to 175 degrees Celsius (approx 350 degrees Fahrenheit) before we started to cook.

The outside of the oven got very warm so I figure we need extra insulation. The outer layer of render cracked during cooking as it had not cured fully - oh well. We'll just add more insulation to the oven.

We cooked pide, calzone and pizzas. Lots of toppings. It was chaos for a while until we started to get the feel of things. Getting used to the pizza peel was a bit of a challenge. I accidently flipped the pides and one of the pizzas but we salvaged them.

Lots of learning - we are going to fuel it up again today.

'Gallipoli' pide recipe

2007-08-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

I tried this in our first bake and it was quite nice. I adapted a recipe from Russell Jeavons' Your Brick Oven and have titled it 'The Gallipoli Pide' to reflect the special relationship between Turkey and Australia that was forged on the battlefields of the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.

I used Russell Jeavons' basic pide recipe - pizza dough used as the base and a fill made from a spiced meat. I gave it a twist by using kangaroo meat. The recipe is as follows:

500g kangaroo mince
400g kangaroo steak (diced for stewing)
1 onion - chopped
2 tblspn olive oil
water
1 tblspn sweet paprika
1 tblspn cumin
salt and pepper

Fry the onion in olive oil until it is soft. Add the meat and fry until lightly browned. Top the meat mixture with water and simmer until the water boils off and the meat is cooked. Stir through the spices. I made this a day before and refrigerated until cooking day.

The dough was rolled out into elongated shapes and the meat mixture put in the middle. The outsides were then turned over leaving the middle open. The ends were picnhed together and the sides pinched so they would stand up.

The pides were slid into the oven and baked until they browned. Yummy!!!

The picture shows two pides and a friendly calzone sharing the oven.

Curing fires

2007-08-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

I have started lighting small fires to help cure the oven, and also to practice lighting fires in the oven. I have always been good at lighting fires (I almost burnt my parents' home down when I was a child) but I am finding the oven a bit of a challenge.

I'm sure I'll master the process of building fires but it takes a slightly different skill to setting a fire in a fireplace.

I'm also using some dodgy wood for the test fires so I'm getting a lot of smoke. Good thing is the oven seems to warm up fairly quickly. It appears to be retaining heat well.

Stage 8b: The top render coat and a bit of tiling

2007-08-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

Today the weather was fine and a bit warmer so we put on the final coat of render. We coloured this to blend with the surrounds. I hope that doesn't prove to be a mistake if we haev to make repairs.

We also did a little tiling to neaten off the front. Some small terracotta tiles and a tile border have given the oven a bit of a Mediterranean feel.

I've had a few small fires in the oven and it seems to build up and hold heat really well. The big test will be this weekend. The pizza peel has been ordered and is on its way.

A traditional oven in Lithgow

2007-08-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

This photograph, taken in the late 1870s, shows a home near the Lithgow Pottery works. The cottage has many features common to the homes of working families in this period. It is constructed from vertical slabs with a bark roof. The process of cutting and curing bark for roofing was taught to European settlers by Aboriginal people. A large stone fireplace on the left-hand end of the cottage would have provided heating and cooking facilities. The chimney is clad in sheet metal, possibly flattened out kerosene tins.

Most interesting is the large dome-shaped structure on the right. It is a traditional baking oven with an Australian twist. It is made from ants' nests and set on a pig sty of logs. Meat ant nests were used by settlers for many purposes. I have heard of tennis courts being paved with the gritty material and it was also used as a binder in mud structures.

The photo is from the Lithgow District Historical Society collection.

Inspirations

2007-08-02T17:36:00.000-07:00

Today is wet and cold so we are not doing anything on the oven, apart from admiring it through the window of my office! I have received inspiration from a wide range of sources and have always intended to list them so now is a good opportunity.

The site I was working with is restricted in space and I was constrained in the size of oven I could build. I had a number of requirements for the build, including use of as many recycled materials as possible, need to locate the oven adjacent to our outdoor entertaining area (yet away from our fence line), and the desire to adapt the existing brick barbecue structure as a base for the oven. I therefore did not build to any of the designs I encountered elsewhere.

I have listed some significant web-based information sources on the links and resources section at the bottom of the page. I gained a lot of information and inspiration from the very comprehensive Traditional Oven web page http://www.traditionaloven.com/ and a link from this page led me to the Ozark Dreams page. This page contains a wonderful step-by-step account of building an oven. Its URL is www.ozarkdreams.com/BrickOven.htm

The first useful site I found when doing a web search was the Australian site of a couple building a sustainable home. Their basic oven information, including oven height, door height etc was really useful. This site is Newton House. The URL for their brick oven is www.newtonhouse.info/oven.htm

I also obtained invaluable information from Russell Jeavons' wonderful Australian book Your Brick Oven Building It and Baking In It. The author runs his own restaurant and builds ovens. He has a background as a builder so he makes a few assumptions about construction techniques but I found his the most comprehensive and accessible account of brick oven building and use. AND the measurements are metric!!!! I purchased my copy online.

Anyway I hope this helps others who are travelling down this road.

Stage 8a The insulating layer

2007-08-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

The second layer of cladding is an insulating layer. I mixed 5 litres of vermiculite with each 20kg bag of premixed render to make this layer. Two 20kg bags of render mix were used. I had to add more water to the render mix than recommended as the vermiculite soaked up a fair bit of water.

This layer bonded well to the chicken wire and was fun to apply. We did it all by hand with rubber gloves and also smoothed it off by hand. I didn't float it smooth as I wanted to leave it a little rough to take the final layer of render. If the weather holds we will do that tomorrow morning.

I strung a tarp over the oven to protect the render from the sun. It may rain later so it will also protect from that.

Stage 8 Rendering the oven

2007-07-31T20:48:00.000-07:00

After a lot of searching and exploring different options we decided to insulate the oven with three layers of render. The first is straight render over the oven brickwork. This was done this morning.

The second layer of render will be mixed with vermiculite to improve its insulating properties. After setting the first layer of render we covered it with cooking foil then set the chicken wire in place. This was tied to the chicken wire set into the oven fascia and should help to hold the second layer of render. Today is really windy (Spring westerlies - must be August!) so we placed a tarp over the whole to help slow the drying process.

Stage 7 The oven fascia

2007-07-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

Having built the arches I needed to close in the oven front. I also wanted to construct a fascia for the oven. This is now complete. I bonded chicken wire into the top layers of the fascia. I will tie this to chicken wire that will be placed over the first layer of oven render to key the second layer. This will hopefully help bond the fascia brickwork to the oven arch and minimise any movement that may occur when the oven is heated.

I keep having fantasies of the whole thing collapsing when I light the first big fire!

Stage 6 The oven doorway

2007-07-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got busy and built the doorway. I had agonised over the style of the doorway and had discussed with by blacksmith friend the possibility of building a steel door. I had also considered the possibility of incorporating a flue into the doorway.

Well, after building the main arches I was so pumped up that I decided to make the doorway an arch. I had enough clay pavers to make an arch that would match with the floor and contrast with the rest of the brickwork. After a hearty breakfast at the Hattery Cafe in Katoomba (potato rosti with scrambled eggs & smoked salmon - divine!), I set about building the doorway.

I pulled apart the form I had made for the main arches, cut it down and re-fabricated it for the smaller arch. This time I measured the pavers against the arch pattern and made sure I had a perfect fit.

I have read in a number of places that the doorway should be 63% of the height of the oven. The oven is 340mm high (about 14" I think) so the doorway had to be approximately 214mm high (about 9"?). As built it is 215mm high - close enough. This arch was quite easy, except the bottom pavers tended to thrust outwards a bit and they were not properly braced. I chocked them overnight until the whole thing dried. I cleaned the faces of the pavers off so it looks like the arch was not made by a rank amateur.

With the leftover mortar I rendered the loose-layed bricks that form the back wall of the oven. Next phase is to fill in the oven front then render the whole oven.

Stage 5 - The Arch

2007-07-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

This is where the rubber starts to hit the road! Today I decided to build the arch. I had bought some Perlite to pack between the bases of the oven walls and the outer walls and had cleaned enough bricks to build the three arches that would form the oven. The perlite will hopefully manage the thrust from the bases of the arch and may cushion the expansion of the oven when it is heated.

I went to the hardware/timber yard this morning looking for offcuts of plywood to make a form. They had given them all away the day before! Being nice people they gave me some offcuts of mdf. I set out the two clamped sides of the form using the trusty tape, square, a nail, string and a pencil. Having made the crucial measurements I traced a perfect semi-circle on the mdf and cut with a jigsaw. I had left one thing out and the consequences will become obivous as we go along.

Having set the form up I mixed mortar and started laying bricks. The process was quick and very satisfying until I got to the top of the arch. The bricks didn't meet and I had a gap that needed filling. Getting my friend the angle grinder out I started to cut a brick wedge. What a job! Dust everywhere. The first brick I chose was too hard, it took ages to work and broke when I started using a cold chisel on it. I eventually made two wedges that I set in as keys. Time will tell if they hold or not. At least the arch stayed up after I pulled the form out.

The second arch was easier and I was prepared for the final key wedge. The third arch was a dream!. I think the quality of the brickwork also improved as I gained experience and confidence. The pictures tell the story.

The oven floor

2007-07-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

I am using clay pavers for the oven floor. They are dense and, when laid on their sides, should create a good thermal mass. I'm loose-laying the bricks to form the oven walls and then laying a series of outer walls in brick. I will fill the gap between the oven walls and outer walls with Perlite to insulate the oven.

The next stage is to lay the brick arches - should be fun. I'm certainly no craftsman!

I have spoken to a blacksmith friend about making up a steel door frame and two steel doors, whih will be hinged to the frame. The doors will be partly to keep the heat in, but also to keep animals out (including our cat) between firings.

Concrete curing

2007-07-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

After laying the suspended slab and letting the surface harden slightly we laid plastic over the top allowed it to cure for a week. This conformed to Australian Standards regarding drying concrete for commercial use so I figured it would be enough time.

The last stage of the base

2007-07-15T23:42:00.000-07:00

We had a very cold start to today. It was -3 degrees Celsius at 8:00am. Not good weather for laying concrete, but today was the planned day so it had to go ahead. Yesterday we scavenged some steel angle from a scrap pile. I cut this down to support the opening at the front of the base.

We borrowed a concrete mixer and set to work mixing and laying ten bags of pre-mixed concrete. It all went well and by this afternoon I had floated off the surface. It's drying very slowly. I just hope the top hardens enough before the snows predicted later in the week.

I'm still recovering and cleaning bricks for the oven. We'll keep that up as the concrete cures over the next few weeks.

Stage 2: The floor for the concrete slab

2007-07-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

12 July 2007: Yes, I'm slow. So sue me. This is meant to be a holiday project. Yesterday's bricklaying is already telling on my back.

This morning I cut up some old corrugated Zincalume sheet to serve as a floor for the concrete slab. The slab will get done next week. The Zincalume was part of the wall cladding of my old office which is now part of a granny flat. It's sitting well and I was tempted to start concreting. Age and common sense got the better of me and I am back inside where it is warm.

Having put the Zincalume in place I grabbed some old timber (parts of a demolished pergola and a fence to make up some formwork. It's all braced and ready to go.

Stage 1: The base

2007-07-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

11 July 2007: Having cleaned a whole lot of bricks we set about extending the old barbecue structure. The plan is to make the oven base 1100mmx1100mm (that's about 3'6" in the old money). We extended the front with some nifty bricklaying and cleanup. I also cut some reinforcing mesh left over from when we built our new shed. This will go into the suspended concrete slab. that will rest on the brick structure.

The photo was taken the morning after. (Yes, I still respect the base.) The reinforncing mesh spent the night on top of the stand just dreaming of its new role. The little section on the left will host a grille which will use ashes raked out of the oven. This idea came from Russell Jeavons' excellent book, Your Brick Oven.

Stand back with a cup of tea and admire!

A project - using recycled materials

2007-07-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

Last month I was deaming of a holiday. Work needed to be given the shove for a while. I brought home some brochures for short breaks in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. They all looked tempting but we decided that, if we went, we would have spent the money and not have much to show for it.

My mind wandered to ways of spending money AND having something to show for it. I have no idea where the thought came from but suddenly the words 'BRICK PIZZA OVEN' came into my head. I Googled and discovered lots of information from people who had ventured before me.

I started thinking about how to build. It all got too hard so I thought about kits. I spent about two weeks researching kits then decided that I could definitely build my own. The Brick Oven website gave me courage. So the planning started. We have (or had) a brick barbecue set-up, built by the former owners of our house. It was never the best barbecue but it gave us a lot a pleasure over the years - especially for breakfast barbies and tapas nights (mmmmmmmmm)!

Well, it is now no more. The babecue has been scrapped (we'll buy a wheelie one) and the whole structure is now becoming the base for the pizza oven and new hot coal barbecue!!!

I'm using as many recycled materials as possible - makes me feel virtuous, and think of the energy and resources we are saving!

The great thing is that our yard is full of old bricks. Way back there were a lot of sheds built with Lithgow Pottery bricks. The previous owner demolished them and turned them into paths. We've pulled up a few of the paths and have used some bricks in landscaping. Now we are pulling more up and drying them out to use in the oven!

The Lithgow Pottery was only a few hundred metres from here. It's nice using those old bricks for something that will cook us yummy food! The picture shows Lithgow Pottery brickworks early in the 20th century. Are some of those stacked bricks on the right ours?