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Wood Fired Masonry Ovens

Started by Local4Fitter, June 21, 2012, 05:22:08 PM

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Local4Fitter

 

  

   Thanks for that link Norm, and thank you Beenthere. I am not computer savvy at all and I was able to post photos. Any way here are a couple pics I took last night. I will try to post some construction photos. I'm not a Mason by any means, actually a pipefitter, but I was able to piece this oven together. I didn't break any speed records, just took my time and picked away at it. Actually still not done. Need to stucco the upper portion, tile the counter top on the left, and install a sink for washing hands and whatever. I bought a book called " The Bread Builders" by Alan Scott. This book and basic construction skills is all you need to build one of these for yourself. My wife works at a private boarding school on our street and one of the teachers liked the whole idea of this oven thing and asked me to build a bigger one for them. I was laid off that summer so I did it while my kids enjoyed the school pool. I was in a pool of sweat. They now have pizza parties for over 200 students quite often.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Local4Fitter

You can cook anything in these ovens. Chicken, Turkeys, Lasagna, Potato dishes. Anything you would cook in your home oven. The difference is figuring how long to fire it to get the heat you want.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Norm

Thank you!

That's an awesome WFO, I'm going to look into the book you mentioned too.

Full Chisel

Wow. That thing is cool.

I've built a lot with masonry, and that project you did is superb.
Jed: Jethro, how's come they ain't no ice in Kali Forni-a?

Jethro: Don't look at me Uncle Jed. I didn't take it.

Clam77

Very nice!!  That'd get used alot in my yard!!  How big is the cooking chamber??  Looks like 26... maybe 28"??
Andy

Stihl 009, 028, 038, 041, MS362
Mac 1-40, 3-25

Local4Fitter

Thanks Chisel. Norm, You can't go wrong with "The Bread Builders" book. It's full of info on oven building, oven history, and bread making. You can buy plans to build one but all you really need is the book. The oven floor is 36" deep x 32" wide. It's decieving because the door is 10" h x 16" wide. This measurement for the door height adheres to the ratio of door height to dome height that the book gives you. I can only cook one 14" pizza at a time, but they only take 3 minutes to cook. Myself and my daughters will make 60 doughs the week before a party and sometimes they all go, once in a while we will have a few left.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Local4Fitter

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Mooseherder

What's the best way to clean it out before you reuse?

Local4Fitter

There really isn't much ash remaining after making pizza. I will shovel some ash if needed and just start another fire. It's almost self cleaning. When baking bread I heat the oven for about 4 hours, let the fire die down, shovel all ash out, then use a leaf blower to clear out the rest of the ash. Baking bread is a little more involved.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Local4Fitter

1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Norm

60! Holy cow either you have a giant mixer or I'm not arm wrestling you for the beer tab!  :D

Thanks for the additional photos.  :)

Local4Fitter

I wish I could make 60 doughs at a time. I do it all in a kitchenAid mixer. One batch will make 4 -14" pizza doughs. We make 4 batches a night a week or two before a party and freeze it. It's alot of work, but I enjoy it and it is better dough than the pre-made rubber bands you buy in a grocery store. I use a dough recipe that I found on www.fornobravo.com easy to make.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Norm

Yeah forno bravo's an awesome site for WFO's.

Local4Fitter

 

  

  Well I had the urge to eat some pizza today so I made 3 batches of dough (12 individual pizza's). We made a nice sauce too. One 28 oz. can San Marzano tomatoes mashed with potato masher, 2 teaspoons oregano, 1 teaspoon fine sea salt, 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper, 1 teaspoon white sugar , 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil . Combine and let it set in fridge for 2 hours ( it cooks on the pizza). We made margeuheritta pizza ( sauce, fresh mozz.,fresh basil) and a garden salad. It hit the spot. Oh ya washed it down with some Cabernet Sauvignon.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

WDH

Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Mooseherder

Looks like great fun. :)
That recipe sounds good and will have to try it.
I prepared today for the concrete pour of our Oven base.
If it doesn't rain tomorrow night it may happen.

WildDog

Hat's off to you, brilliant all round :) :)
If you start feeling "Blue" ...breath    JD 5510 86hp 4WD loader Lucas 827, Pair of Husky's 372xp, 261 & Stihl 029

Local4Fitter

Hey Mooseherder, Are you building your oven with purchased plans or winging it?  I didn't buy plans, but I did buy Alan Scott's book "The Bread Builders". It was a great help. The door height to dome height ratio seems important. The book says ( if I remember correctly) that your door should be 65% the height of the dome. This is for proper air flow. You can probably find all this info for free on the internet but I wanted to have the book anyway. Thanks for the comments everybody. That really was the best pizza I have had in months. Sometimes I really enjoy a nice slice of plain pizza.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Mooseherder

So far I have been winging it but after today's pour of the base I have to nail down some details. :)

Al_Smith

Very nice job especially with the use of false works on the archs .

Local4Fitter

Thanks Al, not sure what false works are but I guess I can make one.
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Patty

WOW! That is so cool! We have always wanted to build one, so mow I guess we have no excuse.  Good job on yours, it looks awesome.   8)
Women are Angels.
And when someone breaks our wings....
We simply continue to fly ........
on a broomstick.....
We are flexible like that.

D L Bahler

I've been looking at building one of these for a while. I hope to make one large enough to bake breads on a small commercial scale. That is, big enough to fit several loaves at a time, and massive enough to keep its heat for a few days, even if that means we have to fire it for a full day first.

But there is a lot of detail that needs to be worked out. Ours will probably have a large void around the arch filled with sand, a technique I learned from the Germans. Sand has wonderful thermal mass.

Local4Fitter

Hey DL, I built 2 ovens so far, one in my backyard that you see pictures of, and one about a mile up my street at The Winchendon School (private boarding school). On both of these I used Alan Scotts methods he wrote of in his book "The Bread Builder". If your into artisan breads, and natural levens you may have this book already. His method is to build the oven dome,floor,and walls with the firebricks on edge to give the walls a greater thickness. After this has cured for a couple days I built a form around the sides  of the oven and poured 4 inches of concrete. This gives the wall a total thickness of 8 inches +or-. That's quite a bit of thermal mass. After I framed the outer walls and closed it all in with durock cement board, and before I put the metal roof on I poured 6 inches of perlite insulation around and on top of the oven.
Sand is a great idea for thermal mass, and cheaper too. You would have to build a permanent form of some sort to hold all that sand in place. The insulation is a neccesity. Without it the heat that should be stored in the sand/concrete would keep flowing out the top. Also the hearth base that the oven sits on is made with a bottom layer of concret and perlite mixed (about 2 inches). The remaining 2 inches is straight concrete. I put thermal couple wires in three spots. I have one in the center of the oven floor ( drilled into the bottom of a firebrick, one is in a brick in the center of the dome, and the last on is about 1 inch into the top of the concrete thermal mass. I can check them with a cheap voltage meter that has temp readouts. My oven is 36"d x 32" wide. You could bake many loaves in an oven this size. I made the mistake of making my door 16" wide. It's tough to place loaves through a small door. The oven I built at the school is 54"d x 48" w you may want something this size if you will be baking commercially. I have only baked bread in mine 2 times. I need to bake more because the bread was fantastic even on the first try.Sorry I rambled but I enjoy talking about this stuff. Good Luck with your future oven. Doug
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

D L Bahler

The German method I am familiar with uses a brick or stone arch for the bottom, with a thick layer of masonry before the oven itself. Then a brick or stone arch forms the oven arch itself. A large box is laid up around the oven arch which leaves a large cavity to be filled with sand. After it is filled, a top can be laid up, further filled up with sand as it goes up. The bigger your sand cavity, the more thermal mass. The more your thermal mass, the longer your preheat time. The longer your preheat time, the longer your oven holds its heat.
They've built them this way for quite a long time.

Note that this does not use fire bricks, just regular clay brick or stone. The stone may be cut or random, whatever is to be had locally. Stone has a tremendous thermal mass, and if you avoid limestone it will last forever (limestone will burn)

You can easily adjust the oven to your needs by adjusting the size of the sand cavity. I plan to build one with an 8 or 10 inch sand cavity and if I can manage it a stone arch, with a brick front and the rest whatever is available -concrete block, bricks, stone, mud brick, cob, or whatever, covered with lime plaster.

Don_Papenburg

Mine is made with 6x9x3 fire brick I have it set with 6inch wall thickness  a mortar over and then about 1-13/4"vermiculite insulationand topping that about 6inches of ceramic wool .  I have one temp guage set in the first inch of the oven wall and one set to take readings one inch in from the outer side of the oven wall .   It takes about six hours to heat mine to an even temp .  We take it up to about 700 to 750 then let it cool to what ever the cooking temp needs to be .  It take aprox. three days to cool to below 150 from the 750.
Frick saw mill  '58   820 John Deere power. Diamond T trucks

Local4Fitter

That's great Don. Do  you use it alot?  I have made bread in mine only twice but want to do more. Can you post some pics of your oven?
1974 John Deere 510, Wood fired pizza oven,2005 Dodge/Cummins,Firearms for all occasions.

Full Chisel

This is one of the best threads I've seen on any site. I'm real interested in food, no doubt. People here are hunting and building log cabins cutting wood and baking pizza in the yard. What a cool site. And local 4 Fitter, that project is stupendous.

Even the guy with the brontosaurus leg in his avatar doesn't want to arm wrestle.
Jed: Jethro, how's come they ain't no ice in Kali Forni-a?

Jethro: Don't look at me Uncle Jed. I didn't take it.

Don_Papenburg

Not as much as I would like .  I will post pictures when we get a rainy day . I have dialup and i think it is going to take a lot of time to get the gallery going.
Frick saw mill  '58   820 John Deere power. Diamond T trucks

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