Friday 19 November 2010

Building a clay oven.

 Today we did a very nice thing. My two oldest kids did a project at school"how can we organize a pizzeria?" so the last 2 months we were busy building a clay oven. Not easy. Never done before. I got involved, even too much, so I spent a lot of free time with the kids at school. Building that oven.
The dome is ready. Inside is still filled with sand.

We built it in clay, mixed with sand, in three layers. Every layer needed drying time... But in october and November, in Belgium, there's not much drying. So we started to dry it out by firing it up, on the pic you can see we put a party tent over it.

The tent didn't make it... Beginning of November the wind decided to take it. Lost a tent, but it didn't collapse the oven.


Heating up to +325°C
Then we fired it up to do the real thing, bake pizza's in it. It was amazing. We reached a temperature insite beyond measurement (I had 2 thermometers, one going up to 300 °C, the other, an infrared, to 325°C Both went off limits.)



Three minutes baking time, slightly burned at the bottom and sides, but delicious.... I was tired as hell, after 6 hours of baking and 80 pizza's later. The whole school had pizza.


This was a project that will last long in the memories, I'm sure. Check out the building plans at:  clayoven.wordpress.com
I will set up a blog on wordpress with more pict on this. I'll keep you posted.


16 comments:

  1. That is so cool! I bet the pizza tasted awesome! I can't beleive you guys built that, those pics are awesome!!

    Awesome job, and great post! Thanks for sharing! (:

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  2. :) go get some marshmallows!! :P pizza would burn in that oven

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  3. that is realy awesome! i want this too!!

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  5. I bet the pizza tasted awesome! It looks like that oven was a lot of work, but very well worth it!

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  6. this looks unsafe to have around kids.

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  7. Hehehe, my grandfather built a house with clay, and it's still alive. I think I like clay. Good post, bro =) take a look to mine =)

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  8. awww my post got removed! :(

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  9. 6 hours of baking and 80 pizza's?! Seems like hard work, but it's awesome.

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  10. Holy shit that's awesome. I wish I could have done this kind of stuff in Elementary.

    Well done man!

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  11. dude i might actually make one hahahaha i was thinking about making one

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  12. the oven is great but... did you make pizza?

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  13. amazing heat there

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  14. Oh wow, that's really cool! I wish I did that as a kid

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  15. whoa i think i'll build such a thing next summer :D

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