DIY Pizza / Bread / Tandoori /BBQ Ovens, etc...

In 2001, I built a brick European Pizza Oven. It was sort of the prerequisite for us getting a wood burning stove. It is my avatar. Who else has built outdoor woodburning ovens or pits for cooking? I am looking to build a standing barbeque grill and other designs will give me an idea what might work. I did build a spiesbraten pit like the one in my wifes hometown in Germany.


http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/PizzaOven#

http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/Speisbrauten#

Why dont you build a msaonry heater? Looks like you have the skill and patience.

I am in the planning process for my monstrosity...

I would love to do the pizza oven but don't think that it is very practical for my use. I would like to combine an outdoor fireplace with a pizza oven and a parilla.Thought I could do the fireplace with a chamber that I could get hot enough to bake in and a side/front station that I could rake/shovel some coals to where I could have my parilla/grill located. I think I would want to do the adjustable height parilla.

Would love to see more of what folks have at their place...

For basic Parilla porn look here: http://www.asadoargentina.com/overcrowded-parrilla/

Nice outdoor oven!

I built one in my house using the kit from superior clay, and we absolutely love it. It's actually very practical and we fire it about twice a week. The refractory is not as thick as firebrick, so it heats up quickly (in 1.5 hrs), and it holds decent heat (you can still cook bread in it the next morning after an evening of cooking pizza's... without another fire.)

This summer, we helped a friend build one in his backyard using firebricks - very similar to yours. Longer to heat up, but wow it will hold a lot of heat. That way we can use his oven for the three months of the year that it's not practical to fire our oven. (Even though ours puts out very little heat into the house, it's still no fun to heat the house up a few more degrees in June July or August!)

Beautiful setup!! I wish I had the space to build something like that. My wife would actually like a large on the floor fireplace to cook in the kitchen. Something forom the early settlers. Your work is meticulous. I have a fireplace in my family room that we use to grill with in the winter. The smell of steak grilling in January is quite a pleasant experience. Congrats on a job well done

Your backyard setup looks like a painting - surreal.

Is that a pork over your fire pit? I'm getting hungry just looking at those pictures. Yes, a fireplace is a must. We started ours last week for the first time this season. Nothing like grilling in the winter. For steaks, we pull the coals near the entrance of the pizza oven, and then I have an old piece of stainless grate that we prop on firebricks over the coals. Or sometimes, we just throw the steaks in the pizza oven and sear them right on the firebricks. Its amazing that they don't stick. The best part is the cleanup... a hot fire will obliterate all traces of grease, food, soot, etc. and return the oven to a bone-white state.

What is the size of your pizza oven? About 3 feet inside side-to-side? Ours is 36" but the height tapers to zero at the edges, so it's more like 30" effectively. I think 30 inches is about the minimum a person should go. Unlike ours, it looks like all of your oven is usable space. To build ours took about a 5.5 foot by 5.5 foot chunk of real estate out of our kitchen/great room. It was hard to give up that much space to something we thought might turn out to be a novelty. In retrospect, it was the best 30 square feet we ever allocated in the house.

Doubles as a bomb shelter

Nothing to contribute in terms of design ideas but wanted to drop in and say these things look awesome you guys did some great work and good to hear you're getting a lot of use out of it.

Just a short vid of pizza making yesterday!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A66cf57eLHc

I'm curious as to the significance of your wife as German.

Gotta love German wives, they can cook, drink and paddling with them is a pleasure.

Can you elaborate?

Your signature shows you are proud of your German wife and that's cool.
Why not just say, "your wife?"
What is it about her being German that is important?
Just curious.
Just curious.

Born and raised in th US, I have been greatly influenced by her heritage and work ethic. They are traits I admire and acknowledge. I have been to 16 countries and learned many different cooking techniques (wood fire related) that I would have never learned if I hadn't had the exposure to it. For that I am forever indebted to her. She also isn't yet a American citizen, so technically speaking she is my German wife!!

That's really cool.
Thanks, and tell her Kenny Chaos says, "Hi."

I see some cool online resources about building a woodfired pizza oven in the yard. Has anyone here done it?

I'm thinking about making my own bricks and maybe doing a castable refractory roof. I would also like a detached firebox that could double as a smoke generator for a smoker. Got some ideas on design, but am looking for any major pitfalls "would have done it differently" sort of advice.

Been throwing the same thing around for a while myself. I still have til the landscaping is done on that side of the house to execute the plan so I have one more season. I want the pizza oven but also want to be able to roast or smoke.

I saw this really cool outdoor fireplace at a buddies house that had essentially an alley out in front of the fire where you could rake the coals forward and roast things on a spit or grill them. I would love to have this type of functionality as well as the pizza oven.

Very interested to see what some folks may have going on at their place.

Right now i just have a burn barrel and a charcoal grill. I can spit roast over the barrel - which is really 1/3 of a 275 oil tank on it's side - which is oval and easy to work. I also shovel coals from this fire into my weber for grilling when I am in the mood for REAL wood fired NY Strip....

Ooh- check this out:
http://www.traditionaloven.com/building/home/oliver_korber_woodoven_with_smoker_box.shtml

My wife keeps bring those up. She really wants a wood fired pizza/bread oven. Maybe this summer. It is a lot of work to build one.

That is pretty cool looking. I guess the trick in any of that is just being able to damper down the chimney and open up a bypass into the smoker.

I suppose it would be easy enough to cast your own dome as opposed to buying a kit or trying to do it with just brick.

This is the site I was checking out back when...

https://www.fornobravo.com/index.html

There is also a pretty good pizza making site that I have to look for again...

This is a good time for this to come up as I am on day 2 of recovery from a discectomy and I will be on the couch for a few weeks...

There is a cool one here that was built in the guys home (if I remember right).

http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/42766/

The Forno Bravo people seem to be the major supplier.

LOL- you can do all that heavy lifting in your head. Now you need telekinesis. Get well.

Some of the ones I have seen are so BIG. I don't want something that huge necessarily...

Built this back in 2001. I kind of chronicled it as it was somethin' new for me to do.


http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/PizzaOven#

I'm thinking of making an outdoor smoker/bbq pit. The smoker component would be similar to an oven, but it wouldn't be a pizza oven. I've got in mind something with an open trough at about 30" high, with an attached vertical smoker box. I'd probably make it all from cast concrete, but concrete block might come into play.

I'd like to put the whole thing under a roof and screen it too.