Making a Pizza oven

About a year ago I landed on a website about making pizza ovens. I wanted one too. Pizza ovens, or more in general wood fired brick ovens give a unique taste to the pizza, bread, cookies,… you make in it. Because of the higher temperature crusts become more caramelized.

Final result - Heating the oven

After doing a lot of research (read googling) I had build my own brick oven in my head and it was time to build it in real bricks. Since I didn’t make detailed plans or calculations I’ll just provide you the pictures. If you’re going to build a brick oven make sure it’s unique, don’t stick to a plan, that makes it even more special! And now, the pictures…

Foundations

Oven mouth

The oven is build into the wall of a separate building (not the actual house). This makes sure pizza parties will not be disturbed by rain!

Surrounding wall

Surrounding building

After the foundations dried the actual building could start. The arcs are build next to each other, not the strongest solution but easier. To build the arcs I made a wooden arc. I remove it right after putting the bricks in place. If you would let the lime dry the arc would break while removing the piece of wood.

First arc of the oven build

The wooden arc

One arc to go

All arcs are in place

After the inner oven was ready the chimney could be build. The connection was build with bricks, for the chimney stainless steel piping was used.

To protect the oven I build a wall around it. The space between the oven and the outer wall was filled with insulation. A simple roof was made of ‘betonplex’ some kind of waterproof plywood.

Outer wall

Insulation

The roof

Chimney trough the roof

After the oven dried for some weeks it was time to use it. About 40 minutes of fire is enough to burn the oven clean. A gray ceiling means the bricks are hot enough to start baking. Leaving it burn another 20 minutes makes sure the floor contains enough heat to make a pizza.

Heating the oven

Making pizza

Ready after 3-5 minutes