A new Folly at Full Moon Farm-- build thread

[WarEagle90]

I like the accent row in the slate. Won't be long now. I bet you can already smell those pizzas cooking. You have probably stated this previously but I am too lazy to go back and look .... what are you going to put on the sides of the enclosure and hearth stand? I am trying to decide whether to enclose mine or not. I will put a roof over it at a minimum but a full enclosure would be a lot easier for me than trying to render the dome in something that looks good. I'm just having a hard time convincing myself to enclose all that hard work

[rwiegand]

The sides will be "New England Ledge stone" veneer (real stone, not concrete). I've also got thicker green slate slabs to sit on the small ledge around the building and make an apron on the front.

[WarEagle90]

Wow, that is some nice looking rock. I am quite envious of your access to that kind of stone . Your going to have a helluva nice oven when complete.

[rwiegand]

First Pizza Report!

Well I probably jumped the gun a bit, but I couldn't wait any longer. Floor temp was a bare 650, the walls and dome were 800+. I used a lower hydration dough (60%) than I do in my inside oven (67%), which hits 500 on a good day. The pizzas took ~3-1/2 min to cook. The dough poofed up nicely and was crisp on the bottom and a nice light brown when it came out. My only real objection was that there was a pool of liquid in the middle of the pizza that made everything soggy after a couple of minutes.

I didn't use quite my standard ingredients, I splurged on mozzarella di bufala for this special occasion, but it came packed in brine and was very wet. I also used some mushrooms on the pizza which also add moisture. Tomatoes were DOP San Marzano by Afeltra, courtesy of a gift from a friend via Eataly. I usually use Strianese DOP San Marzanos. The Afeltras actually seemed as though they had more solids.

I've had similarly wet pies in Italy frequently (is that the intended outcome?), and have it sometimes in my inside oven if I put too much tomato on. Is it just too much of too many wet ingredients? Will cooking hotter and shorter be better or worse for this? I try to be pretty sparing with my sauce, you can still see the dough through the sauce-- I used about half of a 400 g can to make three 10-12" pizzas, so ~ 67 g or a little over 2 oz of tomatoes per pizza. My grandmother used to just take a piece of cut tomato and rub it over the bread, so perhaps a visible amount is too much!

Next time I'll go back to the ingredients I have more experience with and see how they work out. The crust was better than anything I've done inside, so that's a good start. I'm sure it will get better with practice!

I'm going to put a Caribbean-spiced pork shoulder in the oven overnight once it has cooled down some.

[Gulf]

Congratulations on the first pizza. I'm glad that you are also using the retained heat for some "food"!

[shanxk8]

Congrats on the first pizza! We actually did it first pizza tonight as well. It was long wait but worth it.

Will get to posting my photos later after I have time to shrink them for the forum.

[UtahBeehiver]

It seems that once the ovens can cook pizzas, the finish work on the project comes to a halt........LOL. Congrats on you guys first pizzas.

[rwiegand]

At long last another work day sandwiched among the vacations and family visits. (plus a fair amount of dithering while I worried about not knowing how to do this)

So today I began applying the stone veneer to the base, it will also cover the upper part of the house. Not perfect, but not as bad as I feared. I started on the back side, which pretty much no one will ever see, now I have a much better idea of how the process goes and what to be vigilant for in the layout. The actual application is simple, the trick and the artistry comes in picking through the pallet of rocks to find the ones that will fit together harmoniously. (My harmony is a little out of tune!)

I really want this project to be done done before the snow flies! Only one more vacation trip planned between now and then, just hoping for some more lovely fall days like today.

[rwiegand]

Slowly climbing up the learning curve. This side is looking a lot less "rustic" (though the intent was for it to look rustic, there are limits!). Lessons for today are 1) lay out a lot more stone to choose from, and 2) be more aggressive about trimming off odd bits that throw the courses way out of line or leave big gaps that can't be matched.

[purplehaze]

Wow great job!

[rwiegand]

Thanks-- didn't quite get it done before winter set in, the final bits of stone veneer will have to wait for warmer weather. The oven is performing very well, even in the cold. I haven't noticed that it takes significantly longer to heat up in sub-freezing weather.

[david s]

Thanks-- didn't quite get it done before winter set in, the final bits of stone veneer will have to wait for warmer weather. The oven is performing very well, even in the cold. I haven't noticed that it takes significantly longer to heat up in sub-freezing weather.

The higher the temperature, the greater the heat loss. For an oven temp of 400 C the variation of ambient temp on a cold day of 0C as opposed to a hot day of 25C is not that significant.

[cbailey]

Any progress on your build? I'm sure your under snow, but hoping to see some updates.

[rwiegand]

All that's left is to finish the stone veneer on the upper half and build a more permanent door. The veneer instructions call for five days over 40 deg (F) so that won't happen here until probably May. For now I'm just making pizza as the occasion arises. Going to Naples next month and hope to get some tutoring from a real pizzaiolo.

[Chach]

Slowly climbing up the learning curve. This side is looking a lot less "rustic" (though the intent was for it to look rustic, there are limits!). Lessons for today are 1) lay out a lot more stone to choose from, and 2) be more aggressive about trimming off odd bits that throw the courses way out of line or leave big gaps that can't be matched.

I too did a dry stack on my stone and it was very time consuming to find the right piece. I realized that I can get close and trim and that's when i started to go much faster. I did make a 4x8 temporary table using all the pallets I had from my project as the legs and a double sheet of osb for the top and put all my stone on there so I can see all the pieces instead of leaving them in the big bin they come in...i also kind of separated them by size so I knew where to look when I was looking for a piece....nice work just remember your doing something most people would never dream of trying and your succeeding at it.

Ricky