South African bread/pizza/ roast anything oven

[flatfourfan]

So I always wanted a Braai area, (what we call a BBQ) but two main things going against me where a) money and b) money. We moved into a new house and I decided that this was the time and that I'd learn how to do it myself, because locally they are damn expensive and the quality is meh at best.

For the records, this oven was started late 2019 and finished in early 2020. It's been running for the better part of 4 years and with only a minor modification to the chimney, it's been working perfectly. I have cooked the following in it.

• about 400 odd pizzas
• 2 christmas dinners (roast lamb, roast pork, roast chicken and roast beef, roast potatoes, roasted veg and roasted brown pudding.
• Various types of breads, sourdough, wholewheat and some basic rolls.
• Steaks - man this thing does a T-bone and rump perfectly.
• Ribs - say no more
• breakfast.............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
• mac n cheese, toad in the hole among so many more.

I saw my first commercial grade oven at a private house about 2 years before I built mine and it was a monster. 2mx1m and could easily hold a good 10 pizzas at a time. The owner admitted that he got a bit carried away when his son could climb all the way in to clean it. I wanted one.

I'm quite handy and that which I didn't know, I would learn.

New location was found and I decided that I wanted a gas braai, wok hob as well as a wood burning braai all together with the oven being the main favourite even though it was going to be on the side.

I have a LOT of pictures and videos which I will upload over the next couple of weeks as it's going to take a while to put everything together and sort things out.


The preparation for the foundation for the pillars.



Where the oven will be. The foundation goes down 30cm and the base has been designed to hold the oven very easily. Estimated weight is around the half tonne mark.







I'm an avid gardener and it hurt me to have to strip everything back so that I could prepare and plan everything out. Looking back at what it looks like today, it was a decision well made.

Stay tuned for more.

- G

[flatfourfan]

The base of the oven consists of a layer of concrete lintels, a insulation layer between then and then a layer of silica sand and then the firebrick base goes on top. I made the decision to lift up the oven with what I feel is a good height for allowing easy access.

Step one: locating product: I was first looking at the budget secondhand route and I bought what I thought was the right brick, but turned out to be bloody kiln bricks, luckily I wasn't out of pocket too much and I sold them on to a local lady who needed new ones for a pottery oven. If my memory serves me right, i think that I actually made some money off this.


Second load of bricks was actually a total score. They are tongue and grooved domed bricks that were original going to be used as a part of an industrial bread oven in Bryanston Johannesburg, these were the leftover extras and I think that I paid around the R1500 for them divide that by about 18 for the USD price. I got about 150 of them and these were used to do the dome of the oven.




Those bricks were awesome and were slotted on all the sides that allowed for a really nice interlink with the dome and made it super strong.

In the end for the regular bricks I decided to buy new from Southway Refractories in Alberton, Johannesburg and they cost about R50/ $2.70 each.




Ps, I bought way too much refractory cement, I think that I sold off 2 sealed bags when I was done. These bricks were freaking beautiful works of art and to the mm dimensionally correct. It was really a blessing to work with a brick that is not shaped like a dammed banana.

In the end I think that the oven used 250 bricks and about 100 ceiling domed bricks.

- G

[flatfourfan]

Now that I was ready to build. SO GARY, WHATS WITH THE SHAPE?

Many may ask why this shape and why not domed to allow for a wider access for my peel? Well I didn't want to just make pizzas in this oven, so the decision was made to make a bit of a hybrid that would use as much of the space that I had and also make the build process as simple as possible. My oven was based on a friends oven that was 3 times the size, but it could hit the high 500s C easily and also retained useable heat for days.

Reasons for my design:

• I wanted to be able to move the fire totally out of the line of sight so that I could cook straight ahead. The two rear wings allow for this easily and also throw a lot of light on the entire over so that you can see what you're doing inside. I could of went 45 degrees from the front door to the back, but then I'd lose of the fire spot around the corner.
• I can move the fire side to side and can also make two if I want it hotter without taking any visual cooking space that's in front of me. Staggering the pizzas allows me to fit in 5 against the back wall in a half moon, but alas no, I'm not fast enough on the peel to control all of that, 2-3 keeps me plenty busy.
• I like to alternate my cooking and burning space for longevity. I built this oven early in 2020 and it works actually exactly how I had hoped. The only change that I made was the chimney. (larger diameter)
• As I said above, this isn't just a pizza oven, I wanted to roast and bake. This year it'll be doing the Christmas dinner for about 15 odd people, so that should be good.

First rough up and measure to see what I was working with. A decision was made not to herringbone as the bricks were so well made that they are perfectly flat and the joints and 100% level. My peel doesn't hit anything. The manufacturer recommends mortar no thicker than 6mm. No space to errors here and as you'll see I had to redo some stuff a few times in order to get everything the way that I wanted.



Insulation panel in and now the outside can be built up. I was doing a course a day and then was leaving 2-3 days to dry before starting the next one. Yes this took a while, but I had time.



At this stage I was getting more relaxed with my building and with my decisions. Drama to follow.

- G

[MarkJerling]

Drama, what drama? LOL

[flatfourfan]

Calculations were made as I was planning to not buy more bricks and mortar than I needed. This stuff was not cheap and she shelf life was also not as long as the regular building supplies. I think that the mortar was around the 3-6 month mark.

Now to build up.


Come rain come shine, have to build. On rainy days it was actually better as the mortar would actually dry way slower. I had a lot of issues with days in the high 30's C that was drying everything just too fast.



Part of the arch framework going in



And yes..........the chair of contemplation. Much MUCH time was spent sitting hear counting bricks and making measurements.

[flatfourfan]

Enter the beginning of the drama. ( I promised you drama)

The base of the frame that I was using to hold the roof up while I was working my way forward and waiting for the mortar to dry. Yes I was counting bricks and working out what I would be using all the time. I still went back twice to get more as I didn't include enough. :-)



Inside the oven showing the arch that I had worked in to the build. Key was to make this build as easy as possible.



Once the mortar was dry, I would knock out the two bricks at the base, move the frame forward and then start again. The upper course of bricks were cut in half so that the roof arch could have a good 40mm to rest on.



Enter the drama. When I worked out the door and % of the opening regarding the internal height as well as the stack. I messed up and didn't take the thickness of the base into account, DAMN DAMN DAMN. Everything was locked into place and the opening was too bloody low to allow for proper draw.




I was pretty heartbroken and didn't touch the oven for a good week until I had a plan in mind on how I was going to fix it without tearing the whole thing apart.

[flatfourfan]

It looked so imposing, I didn't want to break it down............yup, a bit rough, but i could see similar building techniques. Add a camel or two and Robert's your mothers brother.



In the end I decided to chisel out the two bricks in the arch and would cut them and refit, without disturbing any of the other surrounding them.



The cut was made and then refitted. It actually turned out pretty much fine. Well besides the days of no sleep.



The front arch would be made with regular building "face bricks" as it would need to blend in with the rest of the area.

[flatfourfan]

And back on to updates we go. The start of the chimney stack got underway and this involved cutting a lot of stupid small bricks to get everything to fit just right. The roof was pretty much done by this stage and all I was waiting for, was for it to dry. I had already had a small fire lit inside so that the drying stages can start as I didn't want to leave this till the end.



Now wrapping with the blanket could finally start. This involved the fire blanket and a huge mesh(mess) of chicken wire and steel ties to pull it all together. I must admit that wrapping a square oven did seem to be a bit easier than i thought.



The last bit of the flue was done and now it was time for the vermiculite. This stuff irks me, wasn't great to work with and I ended up just putting on gloves and applying it by hand and applying it THICK. After a good few hours of work, it was done and another fire was lit inside and the waiting game started.



PS, I swear that was a small fire when it started. I had been burning 5 nights by this time and the inside of the oven had started to bake in quite nicely.

Once I was at this stage I felt more relaxed that this thing wasn't going to fall apart. This was my first build and I have a tendency to whole (all in) hog it with stuff I do in life. Why half-arse it I say?

[flatfourfan]

I had by this time clad the oven with regular plaster so that I could get this thing moving, dealing with crap weather, the oven took ages to dry. So enter Jabba's barge was called for.





Test pipe was added so that I could get a fire going while I was working. Turned out to be totally too narrow and I wasn't getting the draw that I needed.





Still this allowed me to make more smaller fires so that I could get this thing dried out.

I knew that I would have to get another pipe fitted and luckily for me, I doubted that I would pull this off, so the base of the pipe was made removeable so that I could fit different pipes and play with sizes, if needed.

[flatfourfan]

Things were looking up. Fires were getting bigger and I could start making a plan to make this oven look a little bit more pretty. I knew that this pipe would probably have to come off too, so I didn't get too attached to it, but at least the sides were starting to look nicer. I still wanted a rustic oven and had no intention to make it dimensionally perfect as this was not within my ability. (at this time)



A few days down the line and it was time to prime the plaster and start to think about what I was going to use for trim. I had kept a lot of granite off-cuts for just this purpose from my kitchen and the plan was to use them to clad certain sections as well as the opening. In case you haven't noticed a trend here, I try to recycle where possible.






Starting to look a little more like something and with the granite on, (pre polishing) I like it. The plan is to have the granite accents all around the outside area.

The inside of the oven is also starting to burn in really well and so far, so good.

[flatfourfan]

Every piece of equipment needs some tools and I needed a damn peel. But HELL NO was I going to pay almost $100 for a very basic one from a boutique supplier. So doing what I do best I pulled out some old steel plate and broom handles that I had and begun cutting. The first plan was to use a grill pan base, but as I was going to just cut it up, I took it back to the shop and decided to just make my own.


Looked more like a show shovel than a peel, but the idea was there. I honestly think that the broom was used too. :-)



I wanted two different types, one for putting in the oven and one for moving them around and taking them out.



I have since cut them down a lot and shaped them more with how I use them. Overall.......WIN.

[flatfourfan]

First test in, to give a sense of size, the pizza is a 35cm base and worked right, you can get 4 in there with a slightly smaller fire, or the fire pushed back further which is what I do now.


I can get the oven up to the mid 450's Celsius with ease, but I find cooking pizza around the 400 mark gives me the best play time.



One of the peels being shaped again as I wanted it thinner.


Nice fire going and everything still clean.

[flatfourfan]

Let's get to using this thing.


Locally I've found that Bluegum works really well and \has similar properties to pecanwood. Gets nice and hot and the heat is very manageable. In South Africa it's pretty cheap and I buy it by the truck load. That's about $60 worth in the back and should last me the better part of 4-5 months of using the oven 3-4 times a month. So with Pizza, I manage to do them in about 90 seconds, (give or take). I've cooked for 40 people, however the perfect amount is around the 20 mark. I can do 3-4 at a time, but the sweet-spot is 2. The bottleneck is controlling how much people put on them and to stop making them look like quiche. Overall there is nothing locally as good as pizzas from this oven.

The cost of a pizza, fully loaded is around about the $1 mark. I make my own dough and proof this over a 2 day period that I find yields the best results.

The oven takes 2-3 hours to get up to full temp, however I've found that bringing it up slowly yields the best results. The heat retention is next level. If I make pizzas on Friday night, then Saterday I can still do a roast and Sunday I can bake bread, with a little bit of heating up. 400 day 1, 180 day 2 and 100 odd on day 3.

Time to play with something else. I decided to make a roast leg of pork with some roast potatoes and man it was good. Started the fire and gave the oven 2-3 hours to get upto temp, (slowly) and then cooked it at about 160 degrees for 4 hours.



I have cooked two Christmas dinners in this thing and when we have a regular braai, people are always upset that the pizza oven isn't being used.


Wood stocked and lined up there is my gas grill (since replaced), wok (that will go in the middle and then my wood burning braai at the end next to the pizza oven.

[flatfourfan]

Just some general pictures and updates as to where we've come with the oven and the whole entertainment area.

This is what I started with, the lean to was at the bottom, served no purpose and the entertainment area was cramped, poorly designed and left lacking a lot.


To where we are now.





The next stage will be to finish off the remainder of the grill area. I've since got a smaller gas grill (as it only gets used in the week) and the large one finally got burnt out. After that a new center light (dimmable) will be added and some other accent lights above the fire to light up the food and it should be done...........start to finish was about 4 years.