Second oven in New Zealand

[billyben]

Hey,

Just a quick message to intro myself.

My name is Ben and I hail from Wellington, NZ. My partner and I are looking to build a brick oven over summer - 900 mm / 35.4 inch ID.

Have built a 'kit set' one with my Dad, which was a great intro but wasn't real fire brick & proper insulation etc.

Our one is going to be the real deal - but jeez this is all very fricken expensive in NZ! We will be look at close to $3K all up I reckon.

I make sour dough most days in the normal electric kitchen oven and have made many pizzas in the kit set oven we made - so I'm looking forward to using a real one and making some authentic bread.

I have some chemistry background and am looking at doing a PhD next year. Hope to get the oven finished first!

Most recently I have been getting stuck with my head in cement research articles - I really enjoy the science behind all of this and am looking forward to learning even more stuff from all of the community here.

Anyway, back to work!

Cheers,

-Ben

[UtahBeehiver]

Welcome to the forum. A good oven for pizza and bread does not necessarily need to be brick, There are lots of ovens that are cast with refractory mortar. Due to the high cost of fire bricks in the southern hemi, a cast oven is a viable option. David S of Townsville Queensland Australia is our casting expert and can give a lot of insight to the cast process.

[SableSprings]

Welcome Ben! As Russell noted, casting an oven has a lot of positives going for it. Definitely possible to do a great oven with just the homebrew mortar (3:1:1:1 sand, lime, fireclay, portland cement). Lots of well documented cast ovens on the forum and again as Russell noted, David S has been a terrific resource.

I do primarily breads in my oven and I probably don't need to mention that you'll find that baking in the stored heat/masonry oven can produce amazing baked goods...you just have to start letting the bake "talk" to you as you learn your oven's unique character since there are no temperature dials.

Looking forward to helping you. By the way, we have very good friends that live in Geraldine (South Island, SW of Christchurch)...and we have enjoyed both the islands while visiting them.

[billyben]

thanks heaps people

My partner and I decided to just pull trigger. Compared with the price a high-quality pre-built one locally, we felt still be saving over 50%, considering we'd still have to pay extra to make the hearth etc for it to sit on.

Yes Sable - the few loafs I did in the other oven we built were fantastic, even if I did burn one or two! The oven spring was unreal!

Off to make a build thread