Plop.

Ker plunk. A huge chunk of sand plopped Right down on top of the pizza. It promised to be a good one too, artichoke and goat cheese.

The next day I went out and scraped the ceiling with my three pronged fork. A bit more sand came off but the pizza and Murphy got most of it.

Not quite

"Do you think it's done". "No, not quite" John said. "I will leave it in just a little...".

Sliding it in.

Here I am using my new peel to slide the pizza into the oven. This time the temperature, just above the oven floor, is 400 degrees F.

Lucky Find.

Here is the second Pizza. It is sitting on an aluminum peel that I found that morning at the flea market. I just missed one of those giant pizza knives, the kind with handles on either end. But I did get some restaurant style pizza pans (which I think I will use for serving, but maybe baking too) and some stainless steal condiment pans.

Flopped; but good

Here it is, the first pizza. A simple margarita style. I tried to take it out too soon and the back got scrunched a little (that is what I am picking up here). But, once it was properly cooked it came out fine. I think the oven floor was a bit too hot though as the bottom was scorched. No, make that, charred. I had set a thermocouple on the oven floor just prior to cooking and it registered 600 degrees F on my digital thermometer. I think the actual hearth temperature was probably considerably hotter though since I had the fire right on top of it four a couple of hours before moving it back to bake the pizza.

Speaking of fire, this was the second day of firing. I started, I am guessing, around 11:00 am with small fires. As the day progressed I built larger fires, mostly because I was tired of trying to split the oak that we had in our wood pile (very hard) and started using the smaller pieces of wood (about 3" in diameter). At one point I formed some clay around my thermocouple and stuck it in the fire. It was well above 1,000 degrees F. The ambient temperature inside the oven stayed around 400 degrees most of the day. I think most of the energy went to drying the clay. Around 4:00 the clay stopped steaming and the oven temperature started raising.

At this point I went inside and took out two portions of the pizza dough that I had made the day before and had raising in the refrigerator. I will post the recipe later. We put the first pizza on at 6:00 pm.

Hail

Hail has pushed us back under the porch. We let the fire burn down and scraped the coals into and old cast iron Dutch oven and put the lid on it. The chimney cooled off quite fast so we were able to put the tarp back on. We will try again tomorrow; it is suppose to be nicer.

Earlier today I made a batch of pizza dough, in anticipation of being able to make some pizza tomorrow night. Maybe a bit optimistic but the dough will be fine in the fridge for a few days or I can freeze it.

Still Drawing

Even with the fire pushed back the chimney is still drawing.

Pushing the fire back.

As the oven heats up I can push the fire back a bit further. I will use a hoe to do this.

First Fire

It is a little hard to tell here, but the fire took right off and the chimney started to draw.

Ready to light

Looks like it stopped raining for the day, so I will light a small fire.

Ready for fire

Well, I am ready to start a small fire but it is going to rain. So we will cover it up for now. It is suppose to clear up later this afternoon.

All cleaned out

Here it is pretty well cleaned out. I used a hoe to get most of the sand off the fire bricks then swept it with a small wisk broom. You can see a bit of the newspaper, in the back, left from the first layer of bricks. The seam between this layer and the rest of the dome turned out better that I thought it would.

Dig deeper.

Here I've switched to the flat bottom shovel. The angle of the handle on the spade prevented me from reaching the back of the oven with it (the handle kept hitting the brick arch.) I used a three claw cultivator to scrape the sand off the sides and top of the oven. I could feel and hear when I reached the clay; at which time I turned the claw on its side to gently rake the sand away from the clay. I only found one soft spot that I must not of packed well enough. I used my dead blow hammer with light blows to compress it.

Digging Out

Here I am using a round spade to dig out the sand. Later I will switch to a flat bottomed shovel.

Few!

It worked!

Judgement Day

Well the oven has been drying for several days now. We have been taking the tarp off during the day and putting it back on at night in case it rains. Here I am pulling the pencils out, that I used as shims. This should allow the door frame to drop down clear of the brick arch. Keeping my fingers crossed that the whole thing does not fall apart.

Done

Well here it is, the first layer of the oven done. Ran out of clay (again), energy and daylight (took the picture the next morning). Notice the buttresses are not quite even but I think they will do the job.

Ran out of clay too!

Yesterday was not my day for estimates. We ended up being about one wheelbarrow load short of clay. Grumpy, tired and running out of daylight, we went and dug some more. We probably would of had enough if I hadn't made the lower walls to thick.

Looking good!

Hear I am useing a piece of plywood and a deadblow hammer to tamp the sides of the dome. Not to long after this John noticed the walls were thicker than we had planned (5" instead of 4").

Newspaper

Here John is putting wet newspaper on the sand mold. We later took it off because it kept getting in between the layers of clay and I was afraid it would make a weak spot in the oven walls.