Pizza ovens - The base. May to July 2020

This whole process - and indeed my attempts at baking in general are documented on my instagram page - toastedtodestruction 

Thanks so much to Steve Sager for the suggestion of the insta handle. 

At the beginning of summer it was fairly obvious that not a huge amount of running was going to get done. Well, not beyond a bit of bimbling around and enjoying myself- which is all very well, but not particularly blog-worthy in my opinion. That being said, in the back of my head, I thought that attempting to make some kind of Pizza/bread oven in the garden might be quite amusing and would pass the time. 

There are any number of Pizza ovens that you can buy, in various shapes and forms. In general they are expensive. They are also HEAVY. One place we looked at said they would deliver -to the kerbside. Getting 3/4 of a tonne of pizza oven from there, round the house, up some steps and across the garden would have been a project even more complex than making my own. 

So I scoured the internet looking for how to make an oven- and (amongst other things such as "how to make an oven in 12 hours etc) came across this:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Insultated-Clay-Pizza-Bread-Oven/

I'm not going to go into the details because I pretty much followed this to the letter. (except the oven floor, which he managed to screw up magnificently. So we improvised on that front). 

Anyhow - what went on?

On the 12th May, I started digging a hole. I had a vague idea of how big the base might need to be- but laying concrete was not something I had done in a VERY long while

Once the hole was built, I needed to make the frame for pouring cement into. How to make a square frame? 4 bits of wood... yes- but dyou put knees in it? You can't just whack screws in the ends of each one....

It took a while, but by the 18th May I'd worked out how I was going to do it. The boards were slightly overhanging on each side, and held together with a block of wood in each outside corner with 2 screws. Pretty pleased with the outcome... I nearly decided to call it a day there as my DIY skillz didn't seem to want to go much further....

Now I have a hole in the ground, all I need to do is fill it with concrete. Cue all kinds of calculations as to how much sand, gravel, cement etc. I need for this amount of slab. Shall I just get it piped in? Do I make it myself? It was a few weeks later that I managed to get hold of a mixer and work up the confidence to make my own slab...

June 7th Laying the Slab - 

Of course this was not without some issue. The Mixer had a slipping belt and had just had a puncture repaired as well. Luckily there was a man with a hammer around (thankyou Mr Shackleton) who was able to get it up and running- and before long we had a vaguely level Slab, drying in the back garden.

 Next up- learning to brick lay. I make no pretense of the fact that I really have no idea how to do any of this- and there has never been any occasion in the past when I have laid a brick- in jest or in anger. First off, a load of bricks of various shapes and forms were scrounged from various people and skips (thanks to Rod, Judd, Jo J and the dude down our road getting rid of an outhouse). THEN I decided that it was probably good form to check and see if they actually stacked up and made the shape I thought I wanted. Then they could all be taken off, and, slowly but surely- would get mortared on.

15th June  - checking the length of various bricks (definitely not all of uniform length!) and checking to see if the Lintels I had bought would fit on top.

17th June - making the mortar and my first attempt at bricklaying. It's funny how the first bit of brick laying is the bottom, which is the most important bit to get right... but the bit at which you have least experience. Hmmm.

21st June - It has certainly been raining, and I'm trying to get this base built as best I can between the showers....

24th June - a blessedly sunny day.Trying to make sure that half way through the walls are approximately level.... Didn't want to get to the top and realise that one side was 10cm higher than the other!

And then it rained for a while. 

12th July - the Base is Complete!

I genuinely couldn't believe I got this far. Pretty much 2 months in and my brain was exhausted from thinking in 3d (I evidently don't normally). Lots of learning, lots of getting things wrong- but here we are. A base for a Pizza oven. (or indeed, just a swanky looking log store). In fact. I might just leave it here... I don't think that technological marvels can get much better can they?

At this point several technological milestones had been passed - and the oven itself hasn't even been started yet! 2 months to build the base. Next up - the actual oven build.