Brick Oven - v3.1

v3.1 came about the following weekend, a complete teardown and rebuild of v3.0 which worked fairly well, with some modifications based on lessons learned.

While things were broken down, I took the opportunity to make a couple improvements to the base. Adding 2×4s to the front back face solved the issue that the pallet was a few inches small in terms of its footprint, it also provided reinforcement which seemed to be needed to support the load of the bricks:

I had anticipated that the fire might scortch the pallet without any type of protective layer, which did turn out to be the case. The simple solution was to repurpose the metal sheet I had used for the roof on the ill-conceived v2.0 to serve as this layer:

The brick floor used a slightly different pattern to help provide a more solid platform for the rest of the construction:

v3.1 used the same two chamber design as v3.0, and was built with the notion that in order to cook the food the way I wanted, with the materials I was using, I would need to do the cooking in two steps - bake it in the upper chamber, then add the “final touches” by resting it next to the hot coals in the lower chamber. A single, larger opening in the front replaced the side access used in previous versions, a dedicated chimney was worked into the design, and the upper chamber became completely enclosed to avoid problems with the food inheriting funky flavors:

Despite the multiple attempts to get all of the bricks to stack and position the right way, the end result was both solid and was even not too bad aesthetically:

The lower chamber of the oven was almost the size of a small fireplace, so the fire was very easy to start and maintain:

The design for the actual cooking worked about as well as I could have hoped for. While the upper chamber did not reach the high overall temperature it did in v3.0 (as it did not have the openings to the fire below), the floor itself got to a searing degree, and it did reach a high enough temperature overall to allow the pizzas I attempted to rise nicely. Once partially cooked and the fire down to a large pile of hot coals, the pizzas were transferred to the lower chamber where they finished cooking:

Most important, they got the charred touches that drove me to start the brick oven process to begin with (the pizza itself was inspired by this recipe from Food & Wine magazine):

At this stage I do not have any immediate plans for a v3.2, the only small project currently being worked on is an add-on - a small pizza peel so I can look even more like a nerd when I use the oven. A few more uses may lead to other ideas, but for the meantime I’m completely satisfied with v3.1.