Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

[asudavew]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

NOW THATS A FIRE!

Glad to hear your cracks got no bigger.

The pizza look delicious.

Congrats Frances!

[Frances]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

one more of the door...

[Frances]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

"Goodness gracious, great domes of fire!"

Well I fired the oven today, kept on adding more and more wood thinking: How big is big enough? My kids didn't say cool, they said oh no, mummy's building ANOTHER fire. And my husband doesn't scare easily, or swear much, so I really had no gauge of how much wood to put on... but I stopped when I ran out space for fresh logs and when it got too hot to toss them in.

The oven wasn't really white yet, but I pushed the fire back with our garden rake and promtly dropped the first pizza on the ground in front of the oven. Note to self: do not try to carry a loaded pizza peel and take photos at the same time.

To my surprise, it all worked really well from then on. Our neighbour lent me a proper pizza peel and the pizzas slipped in and out of the oven with no trouble whatsoever. They cooked in about a minute flat and tasted delicious!!! Ok, I only did little bitty pizzas today, because my dough stretching technique is not very well developed, but it all worked so well!

I made the dough as described in the sticky thread at the top of the cooking techniques yesterday and put it in the fridge overnight. Well, except I used half and half whilte and wholemeal flour, and to my taste it needs only half the salt... so I added more of everything else and now still have enough dough to make pizzas again tomorrow (hooray!). But hey, it really streches out thin! And they cooked so fast! And were so good!

To answer an earlier question from Dave, I have no way of measuring the heat in the oven, but I like the idea of cooking by feel and getting to know the oven well enough to know what goes when without knowing the exact temperature... and if that doesn't work I can always buy a thermometer later on.

The dome was slowly starting to get hotish on the outside half an hour after I'd finished cooking Pizza, and the cracks in the mortar are no bigger than before. They are all over the oven, but nothing you could possibly see the fire through or anything like that. And the mortar is hard on the outside now, although it seems a bit brittle. Inside? Haha, it's still too hot to check, but I'll have a look tomorrow...

I made a sort of door out of an old floorboard yesterday... I think I read one thread where someone had a door out of wood, but if it burns I'll just take the handles off and shove it in the fire... (so my door is multifunctional, too )

[gjbingham]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Great fire pics Frances. Can't wait to see the first yummy pizza!
George

[sarah h]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Hi Frances,

Everything just keeps looking better and better - more finished and more fun!
Hold 'em back (the vultures ) though, next time, just long enough to get a pic of the finished product.

I can't wait till I get to where you're at - it'll be a while though ... in the meantime, Happy Baking!

Sarah

[christo]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Very cool Frances - take some video of your first big fire!!!

I catch a little bit of the excitement from that first fire everytime I watch it!

Christo

[vtbread]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

you are, I bin a muenchna, war zum schifoarn scho amoi in da schwyz, davos, moritz, lenzerheide for fuenfazwanzg jahr.

Now I am in VT go figure. Nice here though.

[Dutchoven]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

I might suggest marking some of those cracks and while you are agressively heating your dome check them and see what is happening...
Good luck!
Dutch

[Frances]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Thanks Dutch. Steam, yeah that sounds a lot better than smoke, doesn't it? You're propably right. I certainly hope I won't have to rebuild the oven... just call it pre-bigfire-nerves.

Talking of which, I got the first bit of white dome today! Hey people, it actually works! It really does burn white! I was so surprised.

Tomorrow (weather permitting) I build my scary fire...

[Dutchoven]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Frances
Only reason I say this is because I read the post about wisps of smoke from the top of the dome...they were most likely not smoke from the fire but rather steam from the mortar...there is a lot of moisture in the mortar that has to come out...did you mix your own mortar?...as for the cracks I think you should continue to cure the oven and as it cures I think the cracks will stabilize and then you could coat the oven with a relatively thin coat of the refractory mortar to seal them up...I don't think you should need to rebuild your dome
Best
Dutch

[asudavew]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Your pizza peel looks great, and I love that bellows.

Your fire looks like it burned well. Did you have any way to check your temps?

The cracks don't look severe to me. Is that mortar getting harder?

[Frances]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

"Da da daaaa da da dadaaaaaaa
Smooooooooke in the chimney,
and fire in the doo-ome"

I baked my first bread today, hooray!!! Tiny little cinamon rolls, because I wasn't sure how the long the oven would stay hot, or what heat it was at. They were delicious and it was sooo cooool!! Unfortunately they got eaten up before I could take a picture of them coming out, but I'll do better next time.

I found out today that it is a lot easier to light a fire with bellows , and built myself a pizza shovel - just until I get the real stuff.

The dome is now sort of crackled all over, but without any large or long cracks, certainly not anything you could see the fire through - well, I should hope not, I haven't even got to the big fires yet. I'm still trying to brace myself for maybe having to rebuild the dome with different mortar (but I'll get at least one pizza out that oven before then, I swear)

And then of course I keep banging around on it to see what it sounds like, that'll do it a lot of good.

Oh btw, Sarah, the twisty chimney I nicked off your link to the Jamie Oliver oven, so I'm glad you like it, and thank you for the idea!

[Frances]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Jä stärneföifi nomol, I thought I was the only Swiss person around here!

Thanks vtbread, good address, I hadn't seen that one. So what is your affiliation with Switzerland?

In the meantime I called a Pizzaria and asked where they got their stuff from and ended up with this address:

Hotelbedarf Basel Geiger GmbH - also seems quite promising.

Oh, and the song for today:
"baby baby light my fire,
let me see the flames go higher..."

[vtbread]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Gruezi Frances,

Haeussler in Schwaben has what you are looking for:

https://www.haeussler-gmbh.de/shop/welcome.do

[asudavew]

Re: Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

Mine is still a bit "soft" on the outside too.

But the inside is very hard. I know the inside has gotten much hotter, so I assume more vitrification of the clay has occurred. It will be really interesting to see how your dome performs. Hopefully you will get no more cracks.

Another interesting thing... when I tap on the dome now, the "tone" I get is much different before firing.... I'm musically impaired, but I would say the tone is higher pitched and more hollow sounding. More of a ring than a thud, i guess.