After several failed attempts using the ideas and materials I’d used in previous spaces, I fell back on Frank Lloyd Wright’s concept of “organic architecture” which reflects a harmony between the design and the environment one is working within. Embracing the 100 square foot slab of concrete I had to build upon, I began to develop my new urban landscape.

While things were broken down, I took the opportunity to make a couple improvements to the base. Adding 2x4s 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.

A well timed visit from my parents who currently reside in Italy breathed new life into the brick oven project. They shared a story of their visit to a sagra where they enjoyed food that had been baked in a brick oven which had a very simiular sounding design – a firebox in a lower chamber heated up an upper chamber where the food was baked. A few sketches later, v3.0 was underway.

The lower portion of the oven stayed fairly similar to the previous version, only with one layer higher (to accomodate the coals and fire better) and only the side opening:

The upper portion was in essence stacked on top of the lower portion, with openings left on each side of the floor to let the heat from the fire below rise up:

The end result was a little unusual in appearance, but structurally worked out well once my dad and I figured out how to position the bricks to make everything fit together (it’s handy having an architect as a father!):

The results were reasonably successful. The lower chamber was a perfect size and made it much easier to start and manage a good fire:

The upper portion also hit a significantly higher temperature than any previous version – just shy of 500 degrees:

v3.0 still had its issues, though. For one, I found that I ended up with the same problem I ran into in v1.1 – the food inherited some funky flavors because it was in the flow of smoke, fumes and ash. More important was the realization that with the design the way it was, I had in essence built the equivilant of a regular oven… only one that cooked the food with funky flavors and required a much greater degree of effort than pushing a few buttons as is the case with my regular oven. Without the food having any direct exposure to the fire and/or coals itself, I lost the ability to accomplish the key touch of flavor I was seeking in the first place.

Realizing this before the fire had gone out, I had just enough room to squeeze one of the pizzas through the side opening on the lower chamber and charred the edges slightly which resulted in a pizza that was almost the way I had envisioned it:

Microsoft software tester Michael Hunter wrote in a blog post that “learning doesn’t happen from failure itself but rather from analyzing the failure, making a change, and then trying again.” With a few versions of the oven under my belt, each with their issues, I seemed to be heading closer and closer to the design I was looking for, and still at a cost that was under about $30.

While the photo makes the brick oven look really cool and all, unfortunately the results of the first firing were not nearly as good as I had expected or hoped for.

The biggest issue remains the temperature, which I suppose I should not be too surprised about considering everything I have read on the topic of building a brick oven. When the fire is at full tilt, the flames consume a good portion of the inside so the overall temperature hits a reasonable level (over 350 degrees) and provide some direct scorching for anything near the fire. The problem is that at this height of burning there is a good deal of smoke and soot, and ultimately as soon as the fire settles down to a lower burn or embers, the overall temperature drops to between 200-250 degrees. While this temperature would be adequate (if not ideal) for slow roasting things like pork or beef brisket, the reality is that this type of slow roasting can be done just as well utilizing a charcoal/coal smoker which is considerably easier to deal with.

The other issue was caused by my decision to lower the height of the walls by one brick layer. In the previous version I split the typical size chunks of wood which are roughly 4-5″ in diameter into thinner pieces. Part of the reason for the larger footprint of v2.0 was to avoid having to do this, although what I failed to factor in was the fact that a good bed of coals would be a 3-4″ inches tall/deep. Add a 5″ chunk of wood on top of this with a ceiling height of 7″ and… well… you do the math.

In some ways v2.0 feels like a step backward, and the reailty that building a brick oven on the cheap doesn’t usually provide great results is creeping in. I suspect there will not be v2.1, and I’m now pondering whether or not this venture is going to go more “professional”. The temptation of this:

may simply be too strong not to………..

v1.1 had some things about it that worked conceptually, although there were a few fundamental problems with it – the greatest of which was simply the fact that the lower portions of the oven simply did not get hot enough. The concept of setting food on bricks to make it higher within the oven seemed logical and worked from a temperature perspective, but the consequence of doing this was that the food inherited some funky flavors because it was in the flow of smoke, fumes and ash.

For v2.0, I gave up on the concrete slabs for the floor and ceiling in exchange for the more conventional use of bricks. While the benefit of the concrete slabs was that they made for a more simple construction, they clearly were not retaining the heat enough. And yes, I do know that any other blog I read said not to use concrete, so just nip it.

Without the concrete slab to serve as a base, v2.0 started with a wooden pallet. The idea of having side access to the fire was good, although having a smaller compartment for the fire made it a little hard to maintain and I suspect some heat was being lost through the roof instead of being able to flow more into the main oven. So the pallet also shifted the design to be a single rectangle:

While I suspect I may need to add an additional layer like a piece of concrete board, I wanted to test the concept of the design before investing too much so went straight to a layer of bricks:

These were the same red clay bricks that are available at Lowe’s which made a good 24″ x 36″ footprint. I am already anticipating that a future version will replace these with actual firebrick, but one version at a time! The footprint of the oven was a fair bit larger than previous versions, this was also done so I could use larger pieces of wood for the fire (v1.1 required me to chop wood into very small pieces).

The walls followed a similar structure as previous versions, the only adjustment I made was to make the height of the walls one brick layer less to decrease the volume of the oven’s interior. The height of the interior is still 7″ and seemed plenty tall enough for the things I’d be cooking, the theory was that it would also increase the temperature lower in the oven:

The roof completely stumped me for a while. I knew I wanted to use another layer of clay bricks to match the floor, although how to make individual bricks span the 24″ x 36″ area was the part that had me puzzled. My family will attest that I visited probably ten different Lowe’s, Home Depots and other oddball stores that weekend to get ideas and rule possibilities out. I didn’t want to get into adhering bricks with concrete so that was out; I toyed with supporting the bricks with rebar but all the drilling would have been nightmare; an iron slab would have worked but would have cost close to $80… I looked at concrete board, studied the gas grills and parts aisles, wandered through the building material sections, even poked around on three local construction sites for ideas.

I finally landed on the solution of using a thick steel tray that are used by garden centers to hold packs of plants which struck me while driving behind one of the shopping centers. Feeling guilty about just swiping one, I was fortunate to find an abandoned one behind a local Wal*Mart that had closed. Some ear shattering hacking was required to resize the piece, but the result served as a solid platform on which the layer of bricks could be set:

The front opening remained about the same as previous versions:

and I left a side opening to make managing the fire easier:

As the dark nature of some of the photos suggest, it was pretty late at night by the time I finished the construction so did not have a chance to actually see how it worked. Fortunately weekends roll around fairly frequently, so with nothing to build but the fire itself, I’ll be giving v2.0 a whirl tonight. Details on whether I’ll be working on v2.1 or scrapping everything for a v3.0 to come…

My original thinking was that I would simply double the size all the way around, although due to the tight budget I ended up simply adding on a side box to hold the actual fire. I also dropped the height of the walls by one layer – partially to save bricks, partially because it seemed to be a better height for the scale of the outer dimensions.

The resulting modifications definitely lowered the grade of the aesthetics to a D minus, but decided to go function over form at this stage:

The added box is on the left and provided much better floor space in the actual cooking area itself:

While it may not be conventional, the side box also allowed me to have second opening (with its own door) which made it much easier to start and manage the actual fire itself:

I determined that a door was a necessity – in part I suppose because the materials I’m using are not the best for storing and radiating heat (as compared to actual fire brick). I used slats from an old wood pallet I got from behind a Wal*Mart – genius here obviously mismeasured one piece, but it was very easy to put into place and/or remove by fitting into a couple of the bricks I turned outward and made a world of difference in terms of retaining the heat:

The temperature on the floor of the oven got only to about 225-275 degrees – which again makes sense considering at present the floor I’m using is concrete (the dish that’s baking is a brilliant Jamie Oliver recipe):

Although the temperature in the mid-to-upper area got up as high as 450 degrees, so I simply put the baking dish on a brick:

The fact that I was able to get a good meal out of the deal made v1.1 a success in my mind, and for anyone who wants to keep a brick oven project simple and cheap (a couple hours and $20-25 total if you can find some of the materials free) you can probably stop here.

As for me? I’ve got some additional things on my to do list – fixing the door, trying to find a better floor and roof that doesn’t add a lot to the total cost of the project, an ash pan to make the post fire cleanup a little easier and trying to reconcile the function a little better with the appearance. Details on v1.2 to come…

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.

Over the summer I was completely consumed by Jamie Oliver’s cooking. Many of his dishes focus on brilliant, fresh ingredients and are prepared with simple and rustic techniques which reflect my own personal style these days.

Warm Winter Salad of Roast Duck and Pumpkin with an Asian-Style Dressing

Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage Bake

I also got my socks knocked off by Marcus Samuelsson’s The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa. A slight variance from the normal type of cookbook I might pick up, but it also offered some very elegant and rich, yet honest and simple recipes and philosophies.

Conceptually the application is extremely simple. It is comprised of four main information types:

1. A desktop software product
2. Other desktop software products, hardware environments, operating systems, etc.
3. An association category between #1 and #2
4. And a level of support

This type of compatibility matrix satisfied a need at my current employer who develops and markets desktop software and receives countless emails and calls that ask questions such as “does your software run on Windows Vista Home?” or “can I import in my data to your software from ACT or Goldmine?”

The database structure itself was fairly easy to think out conceptually and construct. Through some whiteboarding I ended up with a table for each of the items 1-4 above, a table which served as the master matrix and a couple of supplimentary tables which didn’t end up getting worked into my current version yet. The core tables are:

I was thinking that since each of our company’s products and the 3rd party products have different versions it might be easiest to create a top level name or class for them – for example instead of having to key in “Windows” or “Quickbooks” for every product instance I could have these top level names entered in once and reference them. This would also make it easier to make a change to a brand name without having to do a major search and replace of dozens of individual products. This started to get a little funky when I started piecing everything together, so for my current version I have the tables defined, but not really using them:

The functional side of the application led to slightly bigger problems and challenges. I’ll admit these the result of my underdeveloped programming skills to a large degree, but determined to actually complete the project on my own they were problems and challenges nonetheless.

The functionality I wanted was nothing too out of the ordinary for a web-application:

1. Two types of users (admin and visitor)
2. Two types of user functions (adding/editing and viewing)
3. Table-style pages/matrixes which provided information on specific products – for example, operating systems compatible with our company’s product X
4. The means to browse our company’s products (and versions) and view compatibility with the various 3rd party products – either across all types or by a specific type (such as “Import” or “Database”)
5. The means to search for information

But did I mention my underdeveloped programming skills? After a few fairly unsuccessful attempts in which I either modified the code of an existing open source engine or built code from scratch I was lucky enough to run into an open source application named DaDaBIK – http://www.dadabik.org. Developed by an Italian analyst and developer, DaDaBIK is a PHP application (or “engine” of sorts) that was designed to help people create a highly customizable front-ends for a database. As I had worked out the database structure itself and the major road block was the application’s user-facing side, DaDaBIK provided a strong foundation for all of the features and functions I was looking for.

The product compatibility application is still fairly young in terms of its development, but is functioning at a base level within our office’s intranet quite well. Users are able to browse or search for information related to our company’s desktop products and compatibility with 3rd party applications, mobile devices, operating systems, hardware environments, etc and while there are some security holes here and there in the permissions component (shhhhhhh!) I’ve blocked off admin tools which allow me to grow and manage the information repository.

On the “to-do” list for the application are:

1. Better and more flexible permissions
2. Dynamically built hierarchical navigation (currently the JavaScript navigation is being generated/edited manually in a flat file)
3. Additional ways of viewing and/or browsing through the information in a more relational fashion
4. Potentially migrate from an MSSQL database to MySQL database

If anyone has an interest in viewing or contributing to this application please contact me. As my time allows I’ll be continuing to develop the application and posting more information, screen shots and such as I do.

Still partially operating under wraps, Change the Balance has been registered as a not-for-profit organization to capture the opportunity the fusion of technology and relationships has to give warmth, life, joy and hope to those in need. The blog that has been set up at http://www.changethebalance.org will have the majority of news and information related to its growth, I am actively seeking people who have an interest in making contributions to the venture.