It's never too cold for pizza! -35F wind chill!

[Lipstick]

When you live in Siberia - I mean Fargo North Dakota, you learn to take the cold weather and make the best of it. Making pizza is at the top of my list of things to do when the weather is too cold to do much of anything else. Last night we fired up the WF oven again - this is about the 6th time in the last couple of months.

[Gulf]

Lipstick,

Great looking pizza! And, I feel better now, knowing that some of ya'll wear more than a tshirt this time of year. I had on about that amount of clothing this morning.................And, it was a big plus 35 degrees here. Of course, with the wind chill, it felt like +34 .

[RandyJ]

Lipstick

Nice looking oven. What did you end up going with. Last I heard you were still looking. The nice thing is that when you have 800 to 900F in the oven it really takes the bite off the temperature out side. I bet you do get some real nice windchill rolling in off the tundra up there.

Gulf as for the T-shirt in weather like that I delivered papers for 12 years as a kid in wind chills as low as -60F. So I grew up spending a lot of time out in that kind of weather. I am also very warm blooded and a few pounds over weight. That is why it doesn't bother me. As long as it is 5 min or less. I will do -30F In a short sleeve T-shirt.

Randy

[Gulf]

Randy,

I was just jerking your chain . The Thanksgiving before last, I was in Ohio. It was snowing that day. Many of us were out shooting skeet before dinner. I was the only blue person there . All I could think about was getting back inside where it was warm. It's all in what we are acclimated to. Down here, if we have a day that doesn't warm up well above freezing...........thats cold to us lol.

[Lipstick]

Ha ha! Gulf - I usually just put on a sweatshirt to go out for those couple minutes it takes for the pizza to get done. But that's not all - I wear flip flops too lol - it's just easier to slip them off when I come back in the house. Last night my husband made me put his big camouflage warm coat on. I guess he didn't want to take a picture of me out there with not much on. 😳

We went with the 40" Toscana FB Oven. It's perfect - I am so glad I didn't go smaller. I love this oven! I seriously can't get enough experimenting with it. It's one of the best purchases we've ever made. It's the dome one - so now I'm trying to decide if we should do something to make the dome nicer looking, or put a roof over the whole area. Next summer we will do something with the base as that's still just blocks. I have quite a few videos from setting the oven on the stand. What a production that was!! I was a nervous wreck until the ice was melted and it was down on the stand for good. I should post them some time. It might just help someone else.

[RandyJ]

That is very cool. So does that come fully cured and read to go, or did you have to go through the process of curing fires? If I move someday I might have to consider something like that. I can see where it would speed up the building process a ton. Just get the stand done and place the oven and away we go. I also agree with you on the size. I hand built a 40"Pompeii and love the size. I would not want any smaller. And the times you could maby use bigger are very few. I have started cooking 2 pizzas at a time and just don't see where I would need to go faster than that. Once again congratulations on being up and cooking.

Randy

[Lipstick]

Thanks Randy - no it's not fully cured when you get it. But from the time they made it, from the time I actually fired it up the first time was over two months. They kept it about 3 extra weeks before shipping because our house wasn't done. So it had dried (cured on its own I guess) more than normal because of the amount of time it had been since they made it. I believe this helped speed up the curing process. I still started a slow fire and increased it over a few days just to be safe. I would do the same thing again. I love everyone's own oven they built, but that just didn't work for us. We wanted to start enjoying it, and didn't care how we got to that point. I'd highly recommend going that route.

[admin]

Lipstick, send us a picture of your Toscana in the snow with a fire burning and we'll enter you in our Winter photo contest that's going on now! photos@fornobravo.com

[gastagg]

Lipstick, thanks for posting. I'm in Minneapolis and would love to cook in winter. I've got some repairs to make from the winter and I need to rebuild with better protection from the elements. I'd love to see more pics of your final oven exterior.

[RandyJ]

I second that. I would love to see your patio design and finished project.

Randy