The Morgan's WFO build

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Looks beautiful Morgans. The Italian on the plaque is a nice tough, and the meaning even nicer.
I love the olive tree in foreground of your pic. Now THAT'S Italian! -Dino

[vintagemx0]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

We had a little pizza party yesterday before it got dark and the children dispatched for trick or treating. We made 20 pizzas and it went really well. Dixie's dad manned the oven and did great. Heat management over a two hour period proved to work very well. He simply kept a live fire by adding 4 inch round logs as needed and paid attention to to the crust and moved product around the oven floor as needed. He said the center was slowest to cool-off , which makes sense given it's the radiant focal-point of the dome.

We tried a couple of pizzas with lightly smoked Coho Salmon with tarragon, olive oil, capers, onions and lightly cheesed with mozzarella. Absolutely wonderful! Some thought it sounded "wierd" (some of the American notion of pizza we think...), but everyone really enjoyed it. We did some roasted peppers with anchovy too and they were pretty good as well, but the salmon really rocked.

So, this is our fourth and largest little gathering making pizzas. We think we have that scenario down enough, and we think the oven is pretty much cured and "broken-in" enough now to begin thinking of other things. We'll do some chickens, steaks, casseroles and roasts this winter and begin really learning how to manage the oven.

Of coarse we want to make bread too, but we'll probably wait until we have some more understanding of our oven (not to mention bread-making theory in general).

We live near a Greek deli, and in the summer time when we are working hard in our yard we'll run up there and bring back some lamb souvlaki to treat ourselves for our toils. Next summer we are looking forward to grilling and roasting some lamb in our oven with a Tuscan grill when the fancy strikes us.

We are realizing that this oven is going to become a life-style change and we are really looking forward to our baking and dining experiences. We need to finish the roof and make the doors (one insulated inner door and one weather-proofing outer door), and some ceramic tiles and the project will be done and the cooking will begin!

Thanks again everyone! It's wonderful to share common interests like this. Viva la Internet!

Dino - Yeah we didn't think olive trees could live in our climate, but these are hardy down to 15 degrees farenheit. We rarely ever see temps that low, and if we do it's only for a day or two then it's above freezing again. They're "Spanish Olives" and we're going to keep them in pots until they grow a little larger so if it does get cold, we can move them into the garage.

The Morgan's

[vintagemx0]

December update

We haven't been working with the same fever on our oven lately - mainly due to the fact it's just too dark in the evenings. Although it's been relatively cold lately, we've been blessed with dry weather these last couple of months. (Something very unusual for this area!).

Although our oven is sealed with acrylic-fortified concrete on it's top, we wanted to add a roof to give it a finish. Also, we would suspect that the concrete would eventually allow the seepage of moisture into the oven.





We need to do some trim on the front gable, but we like the over-all look of the roof. We bulit a form around the chiminey and filled it with perlcrete, then stuccoed over it.

So, all that is left now is to make some doors. We have a 1" thick slab of vermiculite that we will use for the basis of insulating the inner door. We want an outer door to help keep moisture away from the frontal hearth bricks during the wet months. Oh, and we need to install a permanant chimney cap.

The Morgan's

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

hey Morgans,
Love the roof, looks great

Cheers
Mark

[dbhansen]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Very nice!

[KINGRIUS]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Looking top notch Morgans! Hey Ken, is that a broken pizza peel I noticed on the right end of the counter? I certainly hope no pizzas were harmed in the posting of this thread?!

Speaking of harming pizzas, I finally got a chance to make my first wfo pizza the other week. 1/3 of the pie stuck! But the 2/3 I was able to get out was scrumptious. My next pizza was much better because I studied up a little more on the fire making/pizza cooking process and I was able to get it out in one piece. I'm looking forward to my continuing education on wfo use. the oven's far from being done though. It may not be till spring before I'm able to post my roofing pics like you've done.

You guys stay warm and dry. Keep cooking!

Darius

[vintagemx0]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Thanks for the comments guys. We're happy that the weather has cooperated with us so as to let us finish our project this year.

Darius - Good eye. Yes, that's a broken peel. I am happy to report that no pizza was harmed in the incident. I like the way you are building a portico over your build. I would have liked to do something like that, but our yard is just too small. Nice work!

Ken Morgan

[vintagemx0]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

We finally got around to building a door for our oven. We can't wait to use it - We'll do pizza one of these nights and then cork the oven with the door and see what kind of heat retention we get. Roasts, breads, desserts... Looking forward to it!

We had some steel left over from a prior project and put it to use. Here's a photo of the front:



I had acquired a small piece of compressed vermiculite board from my work, and kept it around with the door in mind:



Here's a shot of the door installed:



We originally were thinking about something with more hand-crafted charm, with wood and rivets and blacksmith iron work... but then we just decided to "manufacture" a door and be done with it. It is yet unknown if...

A) Will the 1" vermiculite be adequate at bread baking temperatures?
B) Will the handle get too hot?
C) Will we need to apply some fiberglass braided insulation around the sides and top to better seal against the bricks?

We hope to answer these questions for ourselves very soon.

Ciao e presto!

The Morgan's

[John K]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Very Nice!!

Your attention to detail is great!!

[Jakers]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

I like the long counter space lots of room for pizza

[Tscarborough]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Second the long counter. Verra' nice!

[vintagemx0]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Thanks Guys,

We had the opportunity to use the counter on Halloween. There was plenty of room on the right side to lay-out ingredients and perform some pizza assembly. The left side ends-up being a place where people set their drinks, but an occasional pizza fresh-out of the oven ends up there too when people are starting to fill-up and they aren't consumed immediately.

We are looking forward to finishing and using our oven this spring. We're equally looking forward to seeing the explosion of activity that will surely happen with everyone else's ovens when spring arrives.

Best regards,

The Morgans

[schallert]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

Morgans, great build. I have a question. How did you attach the chimney anchor plate? Did you use a high temp adhesive and concrete screws? Some have sandwiched a piece of the blanket, my local fireplace guys said this was not recommended.

Thanks,

Dan

[vintagemx0]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

I think a "gasket" made from a thin piece of blanket would be fine - it's going to be under compression and probably never messed with.

The anchor plate I got a hold of was used and had a very tightly woven fiberglass gasket, about 1/4" thick, stuck to it that was in good shape. I drilled holes in the firebrick aligned with the holes in the anchor plate. I then tapped-in lead anchors (mollies) and used some #12 screws. This is a very firm attachment when you consider we encapsulated the entire chimney in perlcrete as well.

That's how we did it - 'Hope it helps you in some way.

The Morgans

[Badkama]

Re: The Morgan's WFO build

G'day mate....Have to say you ROCK...that is awesome!!! I just loved wathcing how you put this together...
Not up to your standards but have a lot of fun here too..It is just down right bloody good fun and I reckon you should be damm proud of your efforts

Good on you...

Best wishes to you and your family from Australia