GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: DIY pizza oven

  • Pizza Oven Brick, How To Store It

    Pizza Oven Brick, How To Store It

    I just pulled a bunch of pizza oven brick out of a dumpster in Brooklyn. The contractors were taking down the parapet wall of a crumbling building near my house. I walked down with my hand truck. The crew were happy to help me sort out a ton of excellent brick.

    When I say pizza oven brick, I mean old school clay brick. We talk about this a bit in our pizza oven videos, but we can expand here. We don’t use fire brick in our home made pizza oven, we use used clay bricks. These old kind that we salvage from construction sites or we find online. I wrote about how to find used brick here.

    People have asked about the potential for bad things being in the brick that one doesn’t want touching their pizza dough. From what I understand, that potential is low to non-existent, because the pizza dough is only on the brick for a very short time. Not long enough to absorb anything, in my opinion, as long as the brick is clean.

    How To Store Pizza Oven Brick

    The beauty of our home made pizza oven is you can break it down. But, you have to store the brick somewhere. I learned the hard way that just leaving them out in the yard is bad. Over the winter, the bricks got wet, consequently, they froze and cracked over the winter. Bad Bricks!

    Pizza Oven Brick
    Snow and Rain will damage your bricks, don’t do this.

    Pizza Oven Brick

    So here is how I now store pizza oven brick.

    Grab two pallets, probably an easy thing if you are a GardenFork sort of person. Plan where you are going to store your brick. Ideally, this is not under the overhang of a shed, because we don’t want more water than necessary near the brick. Learn from me…

    Pizza Oven Brick
    Plenty of space between the bricks

    Put one pallet down on the ground, and stack the bricks on the pallet with air space between them. Because if the bricks do get wet, they can dry out. If they are stack tight together, they wont dry out as well.

    Pizza Oven Brick

    Place another pallet of the same size on top of the loosely stacked bricks. Finally, cover the whole stack with a waterproof tarp.

    Pizza Oven Brick

    What I have found is the tarp can pool water, so I make sure the side of the pallet with more cross pieces is facing up. Unlike the photo above… It wouldn’t hurt to slide a piece of scrap plywood over the top pallet, then the tarp.

    Homemade Brick Pizza Oven Video

  • Homemade Metal Pizza Oven

    Homemade Metal Pizza Oven

    Here is a home made pizza oven I ran across in a restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Can’t remember the name of the place, sorry.

    Metal Home Made Pizza Oven
    This one is interesting in that its a metal pizza oven, rather than the usual brick. I did not see it in operation, but I’m sure it works.
    I do see some improvements that can be made to this home made pizza oven, and I wonder why they did some thing.
    The two side openings are where one would put the firewood to fire the oven. They don’t seem large enough to build a fire that would sustain itself and heat up the oven enough. I didn’t see this rig in action, so it may work just fine, but I’m thinking not.

    Metal Home Made Pizza Oven
    There is a curved metal arch over the pizza platter. I guess this is to channel the  heat up over the pizza, and transfer heat to the metal arch. I’d remove the arch. The heat from the two side fires will naturally move across the roof the oven and out the center flue.
    The pizza platter is too big, I’m thinking. I don’t often see fire baked pizzas that large. With a smaller platter, the whole pizza can fit in the oven, and you don’t have to turn it.
    But its an interesting idea, not sure who built it and how well it works in practice. I love that someone took the time to make it. Clearly some welding and metal skills here.