Every homestead needs a pizza oven. Let me just declare that right now. The very best pizza's are made inside wood fired brick ovens and really anyone can build one.
Each year during our fall feast, we have a pizza day and each guess is instructed to bring their own toppings that they want on their pizzas. Each person gets two personal size pizzas with toppings they provide. We provide the dough, sauce and of course the oven.
The designs for building such an oven can be found on a website called brickwoodovens.com. They provide the PDF plans for free but sell you the template mold to help you build the oven.
As you can see from our oven, some of the outer bricks have started to separate and this is because we chose a cheaper mortar for the outside bricks. The inside bricks were assembled with fire mortar mix and have held up pretty good. At some point in the near future, we will need to pull the outside bricks and chip off the cheaper mortar and reassemble them. A project for another day.
The outdoor kitchen is used to assemble all the dough and pizzas. The dough is made fresh that very day that the pizzas are made.
Jaimie and her helper busy at work making dough for all the campers at the feast! Over 200 pizzas will be made today in a span of about 5 hours.
Once the dough is made, it is then spread on pine boards that are coated with flour on the bottom so that the pizza can easily slide off into the oven.
The campers are called up one family at a time. They assemble their pizzas on the pine boards and then stand in line waiting for entry into the oven.
One of the campers, Sabrina stands with her pizza ready to go into the oven. That looks like its going to be a nice pizza!
INTO THE OVEN! The pizzas are slid into the oven 2 at a time and it takes less than 2 minutes for each pizza to cook. Once the bread has risen and cheese on top has started to boil and brown, the pizza is finished! Oven temps during cooking can reach 900 degrees F.
Finally! You can eat! Maybe its the bricks or the wood smoke, but this produces the best tasting pizza you have ever had. There is no comparison to a brick wood fired pizza oven.
Are you interested in your own oven? Brickwoodovens.com has the instructions, templates and encouragement to undertake this project for your own homestead. Check them out and let them know you heard about their ovens from An American Homestead!
Enjoy the PIZZA!
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