"Pompeii" corner WFBO project in Loei, Thailand

[TxGR]

Here are some pics of the blanket being put on. They have since finished the exterior, but we still plan to paint with white epoxy paint.

[TxGR]

The exterior is now complete except for a coat of epoxy paint to protect the surface.




The decorative brick was added to contain the firebrick, and I like how this ended up.

The last to be done is refinishing the cap of the ceiling (inside). We hope to do that this week. Then we can properly fire up.

Then paint dome exterior with white epoxy, and make a metal clad door/plug.

[UtahBeehiver]

It has been a long haul for you but it is done. Now the tasty part starts. It will be interesting to see if you adapt some of the local cuisine to the WFO.

[TxGR]

I owe a great deal to so many on this forum, especially you UtahBeehiver , Vinz , SvH, many more, and all those who created threads of their own builds, sharing their experience with everyone.

Sven (@SvH) even sent me some samples of clay and lime he was able to locally source for homemade mortar. I hope we are able to test that this next week. We'll publish the results and then also add some pics of the final painting, and firing up.

My father-in-law is really looking forward to making some special dishes. He used to own a restaurant and I suspect he has a slew of ideas of how he can put this to good use. I'll push him to create a video or two and then I can post links here.

Cheers,
Brian

[Vinz]

Hi TxGR,

Regarding wood - I've asked around a number of Italian restaurants here in HH and in Bangkok what wood they are using. All are saying Mai Son (Thai Pine). Sven does have a good point on this wood, it burns through very fast and perhaps doesn't burn off as much heat as another wood would . My Mai Son supplier here also supplies the Sheraton and Centara from their wood ovens so it seems to be a viable option for me for the time being. I asked if they could get any other types of hardwood but she said this was the best for pizza ovens. 10 bht a kg for dried wood seems fine. I'd say that I use around 7kg of wood to clear the dome and for it to be ready for cooking pizza (900F dome bricks / 700F floor bricks). At this stage, one 12" log, split in half fires a great flame up and around the dome and lasts long enough to prepare and cook 4 pizzas before requiring more fuel.

Again, Sven gave some good advice on sourcing wood. As above sourcing from a local tree surgeon and the drying it sounds like a good option. My problem here is, that unlike Sven, I don't have a massive warehouse to store and dry the stuff. I'd also be a little unsure of how suitable certain types of wood be for the oven. I tried eucalyptus at first but later read that that it contained too much oil that isn;t good for these ovens. Another option Sven gave was to source wood from wooden pallet manufacturers. I'm yet to source any this way but it does look like some wooden pallet manufacturers import hardwoods for their purpose and these would be great for burning in our ovens depending on the price of course.

Wish you luck going forward.

Danny.

Hi fellow pizza farangs,

Excuse me the absence, stuck in the real world for way too long due to the crisis..

Regarding wood, I was urged to be very careful with the type of wood to choose. Each region in the world sticks with just a few tree types for oven firing, wood is not just wood even if it comes to burning it. For Thailand, I hear best would be Eucalyptus or Lam Yai (longan) trees. I'll give that Mai Son a try next time, but 10THB/KG seems very rip off to me, especially if it burns fast like pine.

Burning leftovers of tropical wood is a no-go, due to particular aroma and chemicals released that would affect the taste of whatever you cook in the oven.
Personally, I have stuck with Eucalyptus, which you can find in every village in different sizes. After initially being charged rip-off prices, I now have a deal with the local vendor that if she supplies the wood, we will always bring pizza to her kids when we cook. We now get the wood pre-cut in the size that perfectly fits our oven.
A good tip is to put the wood in a kind of iron log grate. I welded these together myself rather than buying them. There is a very nice English word for these thingies, but i cannot recall it at the moment. some if them are pretty artistic. anyhow, it keeps the flame rolling round the dome by allowing air underneath the burning logs, avoiding burning/smoking without flame, which is what we need for Pizza. It also prevents the occasional collapse and rolling over the pizza of the burning logs...

[Vinz]

I was wondering if you knew of a method/product to clean the mortar off the inner oven bricks. Even though I’ve tried, I’ve had a real difficulty cleaning the mortar off and it could look a little neater in there.

i did read of some kind of acid mixed with water (1:10 ratio). Knowing the properties of the wet refractory mortar, do you know of the same acid mix would be suitable?

I used the cement removal product from HG (Found it at Boonthavorn on Ratchada in BKK). It worked fine for the superficial excess mortar on the stones on the table part outside of the dome.

[Vinz]

The exterior is now complete except for a coat of epoxy paint to protect the surface.

The last to be done is refinishing the cap of the ceiling (inside). We hope to do that this week. Then we can properly fire up.

Then paint dome exterior with white epoxy, and make a metal clad door/plug.

Did you/they put additional insulation (vermiculite) on top of the blanket? the finishing looks so smooth on the pic that it looks like ordinary cement??
Anyhow do measure temperature on the dome top to make sure your losses are limited. with a 500 degree fire inside, I had 70 to 80 degrees going through 2 layers of blanket.
This is now reduced to 40 degrees with the vermiculite on top, which is less than a really hot day. If its not done, I would insist 'they'add it.

Good luck with the firing up, take it easy.

Did I understand correctly that you will try 'fixing' the flat brick roof on top of the dome from the inside? sure? I see a rain of mortar dust falling down on your pizza's already. Maybe go through he curing process first till you can get a really good fire rolling and see what happens? if the weird inner dome shape is not affecting the aerodynamics too much, why change? You do peek occasionally towards the dome top, but most of the time your focus is on the pizza floor.

At the end of the day, aesthetics don't really matter when it gives you stable cooking conditions and great pizza. With a bit of luck, the funny inside shape will not hamper the flames from rolling as if they were in a laundry machine. Nothing is even close to perfection in Thailand and still they produce great tasting food. Your oven will be fine, despite the imperfections. The workers, the family, everyone will be wondering what you were so stressed about ;-)

[danhem]

Hi Vinz, nice to hear from you, I did go through your posts and wondered where you had disappeared to. Hope all is well with you.

Regarding wood, I was urged to be very careful with the type of wood to choose. Each region in the world sticks with just a few tree types for oven firing, wood is not just wood even if it comes to burning it. For Thailand, I hear best would be Eucalyptus or Lam Yai (longan) trees. I'll give that Mai Son a try next time, but 10THB/KG seems very rip off to me, especially if it burns fast like pine.

Burning leftovers of tropical wood is a no-go, due to particular aroma and chemicals released that would affect the taste of whatever you cook in the oven.
Personally, I have stuck with Eucalyptus, which you can find in every village in different sizes. After initially being charged rip-off prices, I now have a deal with the local vendor that if she supplies the wood, we will always bring pizza to her kids when we cook. We now get the wood pre-cut in the size that perfectly fits our oven.

Yes I'm still not 100% satisfied with my wood. At 10thb per KG my wife cringes at the though of throwing another log on, but I think at most for a good fire I'll use 15kg and get 3 days worth of cooking out of that with the retained heat.

I did use Eucalyptus initially but found the wood gave off a lot of residue with creosote building up in the flue area. I read that this could be dangerous as too much build up increases the possibility of catching fire....it kind of scared me off. Comparing the Mai Son I use with the Euca, the burn time is pretty similar - I just think a better wood would give off more heat than the Mai Son.

Bottom line is, for the sheer enjoyment I get out of using the oven and the mass and quality of food that comes out of it, I'm happy to pay 150-200bht until a time I can sources some better wood.

I did speak to a number of restaurants asking them what type of wood they use and each time the answer was Mai Son.

A good tip is to put the wood in a kind of iron log grate. I welded these together myself rather than buying them. There is a very nice English word for these thingies, but i cannot recall it at the moment. some if them are pretty artistic. anyhow, it keeps the flame rolling round the dome by allowing air underneath the burning logs, avoiding burning/smoking without flame, which is what we need for Pizza. It also prevents the occasional collapse and rolling over the pizza of the burning logs.

Andiron. Maybe that is the word you were thinking of. I got one made up for 2,000thb and it really is a god send for controlling the flame.

[danhem]

The exterior is now complete except for a coat of epoxy paint to protect the surface.

The decorative brick was added to contain the firebrick, and I like how this ended up.

The last to be done is refinishing the cap of the ceiling (inside). We hope to do that this week. Then we can properly fire up.

Then paint dome exterior with white epoxy, and make a metal clad door/plug.

Alrighty it looks great! The highs and lows of building these ovens, it a real rollercoaster....just as long as it all ends on a high that's all that counts.

[TxGR]

After the blanket was a mix of cement and "mountain rock" which looked like lava rock to me, white, lots of air bubbles/gaps in it, very light. That was all I could find. We did not end up patching the inner ceiling. They did a few small fires with Lam Yai, and now I am trying to get them to do more, progressively larger ones. Personally, I'd do it every day just for the joy of watching a good fire. Unfortunately, getting them to do what I want is more like trying to get a cat to take a pill. ...and they want to try cooking pizza with it, but of course they tried with a very small, early curing fire at a very low temperature and now they say, "it's too big, it didn't work." arrrgghhh.

[TxGR]

I might be ~5000 miles away, but the oven was finally finished and put into production. Thais seem to prefer very thin pizza, but the entire family agreed wood fired brick oven pizza is much better than pizza from standard ovens.

https://youtu.be/XaSGPNokps4