Embedded Files
Welcome to this short tutorial of how I made a pizza oven from materials that I found around the house where I'm WWoofing. On this page you'll find some brief information on the design and a step by step guide to build your own oven.
Research
Research
I didn't start this pizza oven from scratch, luckily there are more people doing these things. I got most information from here, here and there.
After this research I decided to:
Build the oven on a bank: I live on a mountainous area here, so using a bank saved me the work of building a base :-)
Build an oven without a chimney: I've found designs that work well without a chimney. Why bother to build one then? I've kept some space on the base to build one if necessary.
Use bottles in the bottom layer for insulation: It saves straw, cob, makes the whole thing lighter, bottles are easy to get and I guess it insulates a bit better.
Design
Design
The inner diameter of the oven is 60 cm. With an inner layer of 7 cm, an insulation layer of 7 cm and an outer layer of 2 cm this adds up to an outside diameter of 1 m. Other measures are shown in the figures below.
Material
Material
The oven itself requires about:
100 kg of clay
200 kg of sand
Half a bale of straw
About 20 empty glass bottles
To build it you need:
Plastic tarp (At least 2 x 2 meter)
Some buckets
Wheelbarrow
Trowel
Shovel
Another 75 kg of sand
Spirit level (recommended)
Pizza oven in 20 steps
Pizza oven in 20 steps
Prepare a solid base strong enough to hold the oven
Apply a thin layer of cob with a lot of straw (straw gives strength and reduces heat conductivity)
Add Empty beer/ wine bottles (Provides air pockets for insulation)
Fill up the empty bottle layer.
Apply a layer of at least 7 cm with only cob. (this layer heats op during oven use)
Polish this layer with a trowel and water. (you don't want too much sand in your first pizza)
Wait for a week for the base to harden. (protect against rain)
Make a wooden door (36 cm wide, 25 cm high, rounded upper edges)
Draw a circle with a diameter of 60 cm
Use sand to model halve a sphere to act as a mould for the top layer (the halve sphere is important for heat convection and air circulation in the oven)
Cover the mould with a layer of wet newspaper
Build the dome by covering the mould with rings of cob (without straw). This layer must have a thickness of around 7 cm.
Push the cob together by pressing it firmly with a slat.
Add a 7 cm layer of cob with a lot of straw (this layer keeps the heat inside the oven)
Cover the insulation layer with a thin layer of only cob
Cut out the door (when you would wait till the oven is dry this will be very hard to do)
Wait some days for the oven to set and dry
Take out the sand
Light a little fire to slowly dry the oven
Pizza time!
Read further to see how these steps bring about the pizza oven!
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse