Good pizzas want wood ovens!


Me and Suzie decided that it is time to get back into making pizzas. But the ovens we found in the houses we have been so far, have been usually pretty bad. So, what better oven than a wood oven for our pizzas? (and bread, and roast, ans smoking, and... )

Well then we took a weekend, we went in this little town, called Bargo, a place that is hard to find even on Google Maps... There, a professional builder hosted a workshop that attracted quite a crowd. There were over twenty of us. Starting from scratch, selecting the materials and putting them together with lots of craft, he taught us how to build three types of wood ovens: lot and high-tech, and traditional with bricks. It takes a lot more than one would think, to select the right materials, layer them carefully in the right order, so that the expansion will not crack the outer shell and so that rainwater won't spoil the oven. It needs to have a peculiar pear-shape and fairly constrained proportion in order to maximize the efficiency and longevity.

Believe it or not... one of the two wood ovens we finished that weekend was 'light' enough (only 400 kg) to be carried away on a trail!

 
By the end of the second day, it was time to test it. After converting the clay to ceramic and making a couple of bread rolls to test it, me and Suzie had a chance to test our skills at pizza-making and show it off to the other Australian crew! It wasn't that bad! Now what I need is a home, so I can build my own wood oven and start a new career ;)

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