More About Pizza Ovens

The Pizza Oven posts have generated a lot of interest and a few questions.  Here I will attempt to explain how pizza ovens work and how we designed ours.

Where does the fire go?
The fire goes on the cooking surface.

Reflection cooks the pizza

Natural convection also plays a role

And don't forget insulation

The heat of the oven can be controlled by changing out wood for coal.  For pizzas, the high temperature is best.  The average pizza will only take one to two minutes to cook in a wood burning stove.  Coal will burn around 550 degrees Fahrenheit.  This is best for roasting.

You can also just used retained heat in the oven by clearing out the fire completely after burning.  The oven will remain very hot, ideal for baking bread.

This information and diagrams found here.

What ever gave you such an idea?

A friend, Emma, brought this book with her to Kampala

Friends Juraj and Katka were the first to try.  We helped them a little.

Another reason we've recruited Els, she's got experience (also she's an architect, did you know?)

Juraj & Katka's oven has an all clay dome

I say we "helped," but the only pictures I can find of us on the day are me jumping, trying to grab a high bar

and Phil measuring bamboo with is body.  Hmmmm.

We also visited an old colleague of mine who happens to be Italian.  He had a monster of an oven built on his patio.  From him we learned that fire bricks were available in Kijjansi, just down the road from where we live, which is what we've used to build our arch and base.

So, for our pizza oven, we used the book, our friends' experiences, multiple internet sites (just Google pizza oven), and even referenced a few YOUTUBE videos.

In the end, none of our original plans turned out as we had hoped, and we just winged the whole thing and that is what you have in the previous posts.  Ugandan materials are sometimes tricky as no two bricks are the same size.  There are a lot of combinations and ways to build a pizza oven.  Domed, arched, clay, brick, with a chimney or without..... I'm hoping that any combination has the same result: delicious pizza.

Stay tuned for our finale.