Tweet
First Pizza & Cracks!
First Pizza!
A mason helped me with the heavy lifting during this build. He laid 70% of the blocks and bricks and mixed all the cement in his mixer. Wanted him to be in on the first cooking escapade. His parents were visiting from Mexico, so they were all over to paddle and float on the river yesterday.
I built a smallish fire and let it heat over two hours time. The dome began to clear a small circle at the top around 750 F and finished clearing about 850-900 F. The peak oven temp was 950 F -with peak floor temp about 875 F.
Was good to see the bricks in the dome again, except for those cracks
I realize now that those cracks don't affect the cooking and it seems the oven won't fall down 
First pizza was less than two minutes (floor temp was over 800 F).
I was most worried about the operation of the oven today and bought some of the pizza dough and used a pizza pan to cook the pizza with because I had given the mop away and couldn't wet mop the floor :humble:
My good wife of 44 years had an observation about the doneness of her crust (I was sure to make the first pizza out of the oven her pizza). She noted that the bottom of the crust was not done as much as the top of the pizza, I explained that cooking next time without a pizza pan would do the trick.
All-in-all, it was a successful day. Will insulate the oven soon and begin the facade. Also, during the oven construction, the four inches of (supposed) rigid insulation has settled one eighth inch under the dome, leaving the floor bricks in the center of the oven a bit uneven. I will have to work on that soon to have unobstructed peel right of way.
A lot to learn about this oven and how to make things flow next time (s).
P.S. For you dough gurus out there, there was some sugar in the dough I got from a pizza parlor, that made the crust pretty brown, my dough (Tscarborogh's beer recipe) was more a crispy, golden brown.
A mason helped me with the heavy lifting during this build. He laid 70% of the blocks and bricks and mixed all the cement in his mixer. Wanted him to be in on the first cooking escapade. His parents were visiting from Mexico, so they were all over to paddle and float on the river yesterday.
I built a smallish fire and let it heat over two hours time. The dome began to clear a small circle at the top around 750 F and finished clearing about 850-900 F. The peak oven temp was 950 F -with peak floor temp about 875 F.
Was good to see the bricks in the dome again, except for those cracks
I realize now that those cracks don't affect the cooking and it seems the oven won't fall down First pizza was less than two minutes (floor temp was over 800 F).I was most worried about the operation of the oven today and bought some of the pizza dough and used a pizza pan to cook the pizza with because I had given the mop away and couldn't wet mop the floor :humble:
My good wife of 44 years had an observation about the doneness of her crust (I was sure to make the first pizza out of the oven her pizza). She noted that the bottom of the crust was not done as much as the top of the pizza, I explained that cooking next time without a pizza pan would do the trick.
All-in-all, it was a successful day. Will insulate the oven soon and begin the facade. Also, during the oven construction, the four inches of (supposed) rigid insulation has settled one eighth inch under the dome, leaving the floor bricks in the center of the oven a bit uneven. I will have to work on that soon to have unobstructed peel right of way.
A lot to learn about this oven and how to make things flow next time (s).
P.S. For you dough gurus out there, there was some sugar in the dough I got from a pizza parlor, that made the crust pretty brown, my dough (Tscarborogh's beer recipe) was more a crispy, golden brown.
The settling is bound to stop sometime!
Comment