Brick Oven - v1.0

Introduction

To start off, let me make it clear that I’m not out to win any awards or accolades with this project. Technically speaking there are far more impressive designs, builders and final results out there. So if you should run into this, don’t think this is intended to be some sort of definitive guide to brick ovens. If you’re looking for this I’d recommend visiting some of these sites:

http://www.traditionaloven.com

http://www.fornobravo.com

http://www.heatkit.com/html/bakeov16.htm

Motivation

My project was simply motivated by the fact that I was tired of not being able to cook some of the brilliant fire-roasted recipes I’ve seen various chefs cooking, and that I didn’t have much money to spend. The result is intended to be a low budget, yet functional brick oven I can use until I have the money, time and space to build something more elaborate.

Hours of searching the web uncovered a few projects with similar intentions, and provided inspiration and number of design ideas:

http://hans.fugal.net/brick/plans.html

http://people.umass.edu/dac/projects/BrickOven/Instant_BrickOven.htm

http://www.vestaldesign.com/blog/2005/06/diy-brick-pizza-oven/

Construction

My v1.0 was made primarily from a stack of clay bricks that were leftover from when my house was built originally. The only thing I needed to purchase was a couple of pavers and a few extra clay bricks which I from Lowe’s for about $15. All in all I used 46 bricks for the main part of the oven, and 12 for the legs.

As a side note, I read differing statements on blogs and forums about whether or not Lowe’s carried clay bricks. I discovered that despite the fact that they were not listed on the lowes.com website, my local Lowe’s did have them. So if you need to purchase clay bricks, I’d recommend calling or visiting your local Lowe’s or Home Depot as there is a chance they might carry them and can make for an easy shopping trip. Mine sold them for $0.64 each. Otherwise, you’ll need to find a local speciality stone or brick yard, scour around local construction sites or poke around on Craigslist or Freecycle for people who have bricks they’re trying to get rid of.

If you wish to use actual fire brick which is typically recommended for some or all of the oven by most “professional” designs, my research concluded that you will likely need to get these from a speciality stone or brick yard.

The building itslf was very simple and took less than an hour having studied how the bricks were configured from the plans and photos of the above referenced sites. The general structure looked like this:

Results and Analysis

The final result (with the oven fired up) looked like this:

How did it work? Technically speaking the oven worked fairly well considering it was a first attempt. The fire seemed to get plenty of air and burn nicely, it got to a decent temperature and the smoke vented out the front (as opposed to getting trapped) which was one of my concerns with the square design.

Practically speaking the oven had some flaws - its size was perhaps the biggest. As I was only able to find 20″ pavers for the floor and roof, the inner dimension of the oven ended up being only around 16″. If you only need to roast things that are small or can be cooked in a clay bowl or ramekin this size is probably OK. If you need to roast things bigger, I think you’ll find you’ll need to build the oven a little bigger. Even with a small fire of 4-5″ pieces of hardwood pushed into the back corner, there was very little room to place things like a pizza or a loaf of bread in a manner that would let it cook without being completely scorched.

The other flaw I found is that a fair bit of the heat ended up escaping out the front. Granted I did not have a door in place, so this is one thing I will be exploring. Simply having a lip at the base of the front open is something I think will be a needed addition to the design.

If I were to give v1.0 a grade I’d give it around a “C”, with lessons learned, and tangible proof that a such a low budget oven can actually work, I’ll get to work on v1.1.