How to Build a Wood Oven from Scratch: Part One of Three

I love pizza! And lasagna! And freshly baked foccaccia, any other kind of bread ... did I mention paper-wrapped fish? I guess you might call me a foodie. I own a cafe, and I can cook a mean meal in no time at all (right now my cooking muse is Kenny Loggins, but that's another story ... ).

But the best? The best is cooking either over a fire ... or in a wood burning pizza oven.

So, seeing how we always just get sh** done, my husband and I decided to build one a couple of summers ago. It took two summers altogether because we poured the cement platform at the end of one summer then built the oven last year. It was fun, challenging at times, and we certainly had some "duh" moments.

Here's a visual guide to building your own wood oven. I will describe exactly what we did, how we did it, what we used, and lessons learned!

Part One explains how to build the cement platform, and lets you know what you will need for this building adventure.
Part Two describes how to build the brick stand for the oven, and
Part Three guides you through the complex task of making your oven dome.

Part One of How to Build a Wood-Burning Pizza Oven from Scratch

What do I need to build my own wood oven? 

First, you will need a flat area outside where you will have enough space to store wood, move around while you're cooking, and where you will not be smoked out when the fire is lit.

Materials:

Tools

Measuring Tape
Square
Straightedge
Hammer and Nails
Building lumber
Spirit Level
Builder's String
Hoe
Rebar Mesh (two times the size of the cement platform)
Building lumber
Sand
Cement
Building Bricks - at least 200 regular size and 40 flat slabs

Bricks for Wood Oven

Fire Bricks

Fire Bricks - regular bricks (at least 100) and flat bricks (around 40)
Hollow clay slabs -  enough to cover the stand: the first layer of the support for the oven.

We built our oven in Italy, you you will have to look at the measurements of the bricks in your  country and calculate accordingly.

What to do?

First, who is building this thing? Whoever is building it or will use it should sit together, then wander about a bit, maybe with a beer or other cold drink in hand, and figure out where you want it. This is very important! You will be cooking food here, so it should be close to a kitchen or so.
Also, it's going to be smoking sometimes, so you want to position it somewhere the smoke won't be floating straight into someone's bedroom or whatever.

Okay, you've decided where you want it, now you have to build a flat cement platform that your beautiful wood burning pizza oven will rest on.

How big should the platform be?

We decided that we wanted an oven with an inside diameter of one meter. So, calculating from that, our stand needed to be about 1.5 by 2 meters. and the cement platform obviously bigger than that.

The nitty-gritty of making a cement platform:

Block out your area. You will need builder's string, your metal square, and some wooden stakes. You need a flat area!! If you're working on a slope, your construction will need to be levelled. It's possible - we built ours on a piece of land that is terraced and on a very steep hill. But it takes a lot more work, and you have to get to work with a shovel and hoe and make sure the whole area is flat (use a board with a spirit level on it if you don't have a long enough spirit level).

Measuring for the platform

Using the Square

String Guides for Frame

Good Job!

Flattening area

Build your Frame. When you've found or created your flat area, decide how big you want it (see above). You need to make a perfect rectangle. Hammer two stakes into the ground, the distance of the width of the rectangle. Tie your builder's string from one stake to the other. Place the square along the edge of the string, to make a 90 degree angle, and stretch string from that stake the length of the rectangle. Hammer your third post in, then use the same method with the fourth post. Check that all the angles are 90 degrees, and adjust accordingly.

Building Supervisor

Now you have your area, and you need to sit back and have a drink (water ... or a nice cold beer). Are you really, really sure this is where you want to build your oven? Yes? Ok, let's move on.

You're going to be pouring a four-inch foundation on to this rectangle. You want to make a frame that you'll be pouring the cement into. Find your boards (1 by 4 planks), two width length and two the length of the rectangle. Hammer the planks to the INSIDE of the stakes, and check again if everything is at right angles. Just for the sake of caution, you can hammer a stake in the middle of each longer board to prevent bulging. If the boards are 4 inches wide, the height of the frame will be a tiny bit smaller. Doesn't matter. You will be pouring to the top of the boards.

First side of rectangle

First corner

Completed frame

Put down your rebar mesh. Now you need to put down your rebar mesh. You want 4 mm rebar, and it will come in an area bigger than what you'll need. So you'll need to cut it to size. Measure very carefully - obviously its better a tiny bit smaller than too big for your frame. You can cut the rebar with a grinder or with rebar shears (rent them!). When it's ready (take another drink - water this time!), you want to place it in the frame, but you don't want it to be right on the ground, so you'll want to raise it a little (a couple of inches or about 4 cm). Place four broken bricks or flat stones around the rectangle inside the frame, and then lower your rebar mesh onto the stones, inside the frame.

Rebar mesh laid inside frame

Pour the cement! Now you're ready to pour! If you're a seasoned cement user, and you have a cement mixer, mix your cement to a foundation-ready consistency.

Wheelbarrow full of cement

Otherwise, buy your concrete mix (a mixture of sand and cement that you just have to add water and mix - you can mix it in a wheelbarrow) - and start pouring! As you pour, you need to flatten the cement with your straightedge and make sure it is nice and flat with no little holes, bubbles or random twigs. As you can see from this picture, the amount of ready-mix you need goes by area:

and remember it's always better to have a little too much cement than too little! You can always find a small hole that needs a little cementing or just throw it in the neighbour's trash (kidding) but if you have too little, you need to make a cement run which is a hassle.

Cement Ready

Pouring Cement

Building Mama

Like I said, we built our wood oven on land that is terraced, so we had to mix the cement in our mixer up top and then pour it down our home-built cement sluice to the lower terrace.You don't have to do this!!!

When your cement is poured, you need to make sure it's nice and flat. 

First pour

Flatten cement

Finished Platform!!

Sit back and look proudly at your work. Let it dry for a few hours until it's hard, then water it twice a day for the next couple of days. Yes, water it. Pretend it's a lawn and sprinkle it well with water. This will prevent cracking. You can't go to the next step for at least 12 hours! Leave your boards on overnight so the cement will dry straight.

In the meantime, sit back and relax, and get ready for tomorrow, when you're going to build your brick stand.

Stay tuned for Step Two: How to build a sturdy brick stand for your wood-burning pizza oven.

Doula Breakdown

Last week was a week full of difficulties and ruptures - it wasn't a rapture, silly, to quote my dear friend Syd...

All sorts of very difficult things happened to a lot of people I know, and by the end of the week I was just wondering what was going to happen next. And then, after a rather difficult labor and birth, a proud new grandmother hugged me and said, "This is the happiest day of my life"!

It was the same day a very gentle and wonderful woman in our family passed away, so it was especially poignant to me to see the paradox of being alive with such clarity.

A couple of months ago I called one of my apprentices to let her know that our client was in early labor. She said she just couldn't come with me - literally that minute she had broken up with her boyfriend. I let her know that this is something that happens - the doula's life goes on, and even if something disturbing is taking place in your life, you can still put that something in a box and go to take part in another woman's joy without reserve, clean, fresh, and open.

How do we do this? I have spent many taxi rides doing just that - letting go of my worries about one of my sons, or the fact that my husband and I had planned a much-needed evening together, or what that strange phone call was about from my dear friend. I let it go, and I try to concentrate on the woman I will be attending, and her needs.

Sometimes the doula does have to take a break from doula work in order to concentrate on sorting out her personal issues. I remember several years ago when a doula called me in tears because her husband was not happy with her being away at nights. She chose to move to a different area of maternity care and is happy doing childbirth education and staying home nights. I personally take a break every summer and turn my energies to creating a different sort of life in a very different environment. That life may include birth one day, I don't know right now, but I do know that I am happy without my pager when I am working the cement mixer up on our mountain.

Just fixing everything up here with a little love, some words, and a dab of cement!

Veggie Moussaka Is Good (despite its name)

Moussaka on the Mountain

This was a good meal after a week of working the cement mixer at our place in Lunigiana.

Cut a large eggplant in 1cm slices and layer the slices on a plate, covering each slice with coarse salt. Put a heavy weight (another plate and large log, or a frying pan, ... be creative!) on the slices and let them sit for 30 minutes. The water will drain off and make the eggplant less acidic.
While you are waiting, peel and cut 3 or 4 potatoes into thin slices, the same with white onions (1 or 2), and possibly mushrooms.
Make a bechamel sauce:

Place one tablespoon white flour and 1/4 cup butter in a small pan and heat it until it forms a whitish lump. Slowly add milk and stir it like crazy while it is cooking on a low heat. Add salt and lots of grated nutmeg. Beat the lumps out with your wooden spoon. When it gets too thick, add more milk. Keep beating until it looks like a smooth, pourable sauce.

By now your eggplant should be ready. Remove them from the plate and brush off the excess salt. Place the vegetables in layers in a large oiled casserole, adding 3 cloves garlic, sliced or squeezed, dried oregano and a fresh hot chili if you wish. Slather it all with abundant olive oil, salt and pepper and pour the bechamel on top. Cook in a 375 oven for an hour or until the vegetables are soft. Let it cool a little before eating so it sets.