Wood fired pizza oven

So over the last few months Dave and I have been slowly working towards our goal of getting our own wood fired pizza oven built in our back yard. Well we've finally finished and have now been enjoying some delicious home baked wood fired pizzas, and thought I would share some of the pictures from along the way.

The base at the very beginning! The hard work all before us.

Bottom refractory bricks placed, ready for the dome to be put on.

We got the help of a few of our mates, as each piece of the dome was around 100kgs each. I directed and generally made sure all fingers were still attached at the end of the process.

The joins between the pieces filled, ready for insulation and rendering.

Insulating the dome was a real pain, as multiple layers including the fluffy insulation, tin foil, and chicken wire all had to all sit on top of each other and lay flat to the dome before we could start to render. It was a slow process that took longer than either of us had anticipated. But we persevered and got there in the end.

Dave starting to mix up the cement render as the final stage of oven building. This was tricky as neither of us had ever worked with render and had no idea what we were doing, and the realisation that if we mucked it up badly that it would stick out like a sore thumb and be very hard to fix down the track.

In hindsight we started rendering a little late, and ended up finishing the render in the dark. Living room lamps and camping lantern came in very handy!

Getting close to the end, some fully rendered, and front face spray painted with a high heat enamel paint.

We decided to do a mosaic tile around the base of the oven, and had a custom slab of marri made for the front assembly area.

Our friend Mark enjoying his first homemade pizza from our oven! 

 

 

In the end we've had heaps of friends over for pizza parties on more than one occasion and everyone has commented on just how amazing the pizzas taste coming out of the wood fired oven. By far they're the best homemade pizzas I've ever made, and would highly recommend one if you don't mind a little hard work and sweat equity!