The Pizza Oven: Part 4 or It's Gettin' Hot in Here

And so the tale of the Italian pie baking chamber continues...

insulation was added to the oven and pinned down with chicken wire

Sr Chill handed the trowel over to Henry for the last bit of construction (as you might of realized this has become quite the epic backyard project).  Henry has some masonry experience and you may remember his participation in the building of the base of the oven.  This is the first layer of clay over the chicken wire.  The oven is starting to mushroom over the base at this point.  It's much larger than we ever planned for. 

The final layer on the barrel of the oven.  So smooth and expertly done with a lovely textured finished.

Since smoke was pouring out of the door of the oven in our previous fires, we thought we'd give a last ditch effort to create a chimney, something that ideally might be in the rear of the oven if you're making one at your house this summer.  We used this cracker box as the template for the metal workers.

This is the chimney attached to the front of the oven with some mesh around it so the clay can still stick the metal.

Henry hard at work.

And this is what I came home to one sunny afternoon!  Oo-la-la, she's beautiful!

Can I get a round of applause for Henry?  He's the man! This is our most professional and finished pizza oven front.  

Phil got busy installing the pizza oven area lighting.  He's standing on our washing machine adding wires to an existing light in order to run the wire outside by the oven.  Clever boy.

Ta-da!  No more flashlights needed.

While Philster was doing that, I added a few more tiles to the oven surround because I figure a pizza oven can't have too much bling.

And we fired her up.  Look at the smoke pouring out of the chimney.

Yummy pizza cooking right along.

There's even space for 2 in there. 

*Notice the front of the oven is black due to smoke.  Although the chimney was working it just wasn't large enough or perhaps not creating enough draft to collect all the smoke.  Still we're glad we added it.  We may make the chimney higher which scientifically should make it better but you'd have to ask Phil for the explanation of all that jazz.

**Pizzas still took some time to cook and Phil is not satisfied with the crust crispiness to browning cheese on top ratio. He's designing a feature to improve this aspect of the oven which will make our pizza oven less conventional, but with the result of the perfect pie.  Fingers crossed.  Of course, once completed I'll show you on this here blog of mine.

Pizza oven building has been a lot of work, but so much fun and we've learned more than we could've ever expected.  Please come by and we'll have a pizza party!