“This pizza oven is just about as simple to build as stacking blocks, but creates a highly effective wood fired oven with an arched roof that can reach the 800-900 degree temperatures needed to make mindblowing pizza.
This is a great, low-cost project for someone who wants to test out the ins-and-outs of brick oven cooking. Super fast and easy to build, and with minor modifications, it can be assembled semi-permanently and get you through a season of baking delicious breads and pizzas.
I attended a fantastic pizza making event at Machine Project (instructor: Michael O’Malley) that included the construction and firing of a DIY temporary brick pizza oven – the ultimate in pizza cooking. Hugely educational and inspiring, even for a committed pizza fanatic such as myself. The oven, built, fired up, and torn down over the course of an afternoon, worked amazingly well – I cooked the best pizza I’ve ever made, by far.”
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Note: While not exactly cheap at $700, a conventional brick oven can take weeks to build by professional masons and cost thousands. I’d love to build this for my friend who’s opening a new restaurant. For more typical family-sized backyard baking, you might want to try making a barrel oven that costs much less.
Is there any possibility of using earth bags to build this? Or at least part of it (i.e. the foundation)? I want to start with something small and practical using earthbags before I begin my larger bungalow structure and a friend with a restaurant expressed a need for a brick oven. We want to keep the materials as low cost as possible ($700 is far out of our price range).
There are more efficient materials available, although earthbags would make a good base if you want to raise the stove to a comfortable work height.
I’ve had dozens of delicious meals from wood fired ovens. They’re highly recommended. Let me know if you find something similar to this one — easy to build, reasonable cost, large enough for a small restaurant, efficient design. Note: I don’t want to build a clay oven in this rainy climate. Plus, we couldn’t risk bits of clay falling into the food.