GRM Wood Fired Ovens

I bake a lot of bread and make some decent pizzas too, and I'm beginning to think it is time to start looking into a wood fired oven for my backyard. There's tons of info on the net, but I knew the hive might be able to narrow that down.

Anyone here with experience with wood fired ovens? I'm no mason, but I'm not afraid to try my hand at laying brick. I'd prefer a GRM approach, but also not afraid to invest a few dollars if there is an easy button that works.

Think of the possibilities:

sounds interesting

My sister bakes professionally in Belgium and has built two wood fired ovens so far with a third in the planning stages. These are pretty big ovens, but the basics are the same. You're looking for insulation, thermal mass, and firebox design so that heat is even and it fires well. Look at the designs by Alan Scott. He passed away a couple of years ago but the work he did laid the foundation for most modern wood fired baking.
If you have any specific questions I can pass them on. Wood fired baking is pretty cool.

When is dinner. I love fresh bread and pizza. Maybe dad needs another road trip in the bus.

I helped a buddy of mine build one. It was a design a friend of his had come up with that is loose bricks topped by a molded concrete and brick arched top. The weight of the top holds the whole thing together. If you were to tap on the sides with a mallet bricks would dislodge. It has been together for about 3 years now.

The loose brick design has worked out for him, when his deck became polluted with grease and imparted an off flavor to breads he was able to just swap the bricks out.

We fire it up for huge DIY pizza parties where it will run for hours and make 30 or so pizzas. He also roasts meat, bakes bread, roasts vegetables... ect.

We learned the hard way that there is a difference between Neapolitan pizza dough and american style. The deck is so hot that any oil in the pizza or bread dough vaporizes and makes everything taste terrible. Switching to a traditional Italian or French yeast dough with no oil fixed that. Some visitors brought over a ball of pre made grocery store dough that felt like a pilsbury product and it was so bad that we had to move the fire over to that area of the deck and burn it off for an hour before we could continue.

Thanks, now I am craving wood-fired pizza. Man that looks good. Can I cone over once it's done?

You can do a pretty good job in your house oven turned up all the way (usually 550) with something to provide mass and cook the pizza on. Very simple dough of flour water salt and either yeast or a sourdough starter. Because the heat is lower (pizza ovens are closer to 800) it works best to pre-cook the crust for 30-50 seconds. Not quite the same as a proper pizza oven but you can get about 95% of the way there for no investment. Gives you an idea of now much work it is. I do three pizzas for the kids almost every week.

Son_Of_Toyman wrote: When is dinner. I love fresh bread and pizza. Maybe dad needs another road trip in the bus.

This. No idea how to build one, nor the skills to make use of one, but do call once you have it finished

Actually a buddy of mine has been talking about building a wood oven for a few years now. I have zero faith in his ability to actually execute any of the design/build phase of the project, however he is a hell of a cook (Italian family, has worked in his dad's pizza shops since he was tall enough to reach the counter.) This thread is making me want to show up one weekend and build one for him, so that we may all reap the benefits.

mazdeuce wrote: You can do a pretty good job in your house oven...

I've got a Primo Grill that I can set up for pizza that comes out spectacularly well. Here is a photo of one of my pizzas on it:

10155072_10203838141500564_5466186799568124957_n by craig richmond, on Flickr

Another: 1267244_10202332273214798_63744442_o by craig richmond, on Flickr

Here is what a Primo Grill looks like:

I think I do a much better job these days, but these are the only photos I could find.

The thing is, the grill works GREAT for pizza, but not so great for bread. Always comes out a little smoky, plus I can only do one pizza or item on the grill at a time.

Here are some examples of my bread:

Rustic hearth bread [url=https://flic.kr/p/DDgCyc]12716442_10209080619599240_2182539432650185654_o by craig richmond, on Flickr

Buttermilk Loaves

1969211_10206247421211051_67350472482762036_n by craig richmond, on Flickr

In reply to mazdeuce:

I've heard of putting a steel plate or overturned cast iron pan you don't like under the broiler, never tried it though.

In reply to Jumper K. Balls:

I'm tempted to do a simple oven similar to what it sounds like your buddy did. Just to try it out.

Regarding dough, as you said, it definitely has to be suitable for the cooking style. I've been through about four different formulations, and I'm pretty fond of the one I use now for cooking on my grill. In the two pizza photos I just posted, the second one is a Neapolitan style, cooked at about 650. The first image is a much more bready crust that had olive oil in it too, that I cook at more like 500.

As I understand it, wood fired ovens are typically used one of two ways: residual heat and active fire. Most pizza places run active fire, where temp is maintained by a fire. These ovens are typically less insulated as they are not intended to cook for long on residual heat alone.

Bread baking on the other hand is more typically done with residual heat alone. The oven is pre-heated for an hour or two, and then the fire is pulled out. Bread can be baked consecutively for a few hours if the oven has sufficient thermal mass.

I'd like one with sufficient insulation to be able to cook with residual heat for an hour or two.

Which brings me to the whole motivation to do this - rustic breads are very lean, given that they are usually not enriched in any way. Just flour, yeast, water, and salt. As such, they need high heat to develop the crust. Most ovens really struggle at higher temps, including mine.

Mazduce, thanks for the offer to bounce questions off of your sister. Problem is I'd really want to talk to her for a few hours.

Send me a PM and I'll get you in touch with her. She may know a baker in your area already. Professional wood fired bakers are a pretty small tight knit group world wide and it's weird how many of them know each other. She likes to talk bread. It's what she does.
Are you using yeast or a starter? In all of my experimenting and learning it has really been the development of a good healthy starter that did the most for my bread. I don't have one going now because I'm a bit lazy. Takes a couple of months, but it's worth it.

honest to god truth, i use my fireplace with a baking stone or a grill depending on what i'm cooking/baking. going to try some pizza with oak fire this weekend.

In reply to patgizz:

That is among the most brilliant things I've read and is likely to have significant ramifications for how I re-do the fireplace in my cottage some day. Brilliant.

Mmmmmmmmmmm pizza on the grill.

mazdeuce wrote: In reply to patgizz: That is among the most brilliant things I've read and is likely to have significant ramifications for how I re-do the fireplace in my cottage some day. Brilliant.

+1

mazdeuce wrote: Are you using yeast or a starter? In all of my experimenting and learning it has really been the development of a good healthy starter that did the most for my bread. I don't have one going now because I'm a bit lazy. Takes a couple of months, but it's worth it.

All yeast so far, but I fed some organic dark rye and created my own starter recently, so I'm looking forward to trying that out!

I'll PM you shortly.

This thread is relevant to my interests.

I came across this stacked brick oven a few years ago and I am tempted to build one this spring. http://people.umass.edu/dac/projects/BrickOven/Instant_BrickOven.htm

I like this idea: http://www.instructables.com/id/My-135-Wood-fired-Pizza-Oven/

Seeing all of this makes me think of another possibility....

I'm sure everyone here is familiar with Weber grills- and then seeing the Primo grill that Mezzanine posted about...

Well, if one can find a recipe for the fire stone material that is lining that grill, it's possible to get an old Weber (or one shaped like it), line the top with the fire stone material. Also, it's feasible to take the top of the used grill, and cut a good opening in the side of it, like the bread ovens.

Geez, the more I think about it... if you can make a slab the size of the grill surface, and the line extra top, you could easily have a small fire box out of an old Grill.

I love how this website makes you think and search. Blows time quickly.

So doing some searching, I found this guy called the PizzaHacker.

What he did was what I was thinking about- he made a small wood oven out of a weber grill. Started by using the weber top as a form to cast a "lid" to the oven- which is made of masonry cement, fire clay, and peralite. Then with some fire bricks, stacked them into a circle (with an opening) around the outside and placed the dome on top.

that's it.

Great idea, and something very easy to do and undo to a weber I have in my back yard.

Pizza oven VIA James May James May of TopGear fame had his own show called ManLab, a darn good show in my book. about 5 minutes into that clip he takes you through the step by step of building your own pizza oven.

alfadriver wrote: I love how this website makes you think and search. Blows time

I'm sure Ford loves it too -- yes, you can call me Pot.

AngryCorvair wrote:

alfadriver wrote: I love how this website makes you think and search. Blows time

I'm sure Ford loves it too -- yes, you can call me Pot.

In many aspects, I would be much, much happier if I was not here until 5pm.

So here's a picture of a Weber grill based oven. The green part is the lower part of the grill, and the top part was cast from the top

In reply to DaveEstey: Hmm...I've got a yoga ball like that in the backyard. When I watched the video in the Instructable, I found this one:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SNiZ-sN9d40

These guys sell the mold and the plans. Not nearly as cheap as molding it over a ball yourself, but the finished product looks legit.