Building a Wood-fired Masonry Oven

There's no point in going to all the work of building a wood-fired oven if you aren't going to be able to enjoy the results. While you aren't here with us to sample our first efforts, we are going to tempt you with some photos. Maybe some day the Internet will be able to provide a "smell" factor as well as a visual one. Until then, just use your imagination . . . ENJOY!

One of the first things we made was pizza — of course! Because the wood-fired oven bakes so fast (pizza is baked at about 700°F), the vegetables were pre-cooked in a skillet in the kitchen, and the pizza assembled, ready to bake.

We were just finished enough with the oven to be able to use it, but had not yet purchased an oven mop. Since we didn't want to eat a bunch of ashes (even if they won't hurt us), we baked the first pizza on a regular pizza pan to keep it out of the ashes on the floor of the oven. Subsequent pizzas were baked directly on a mopped hearth, and the oven spring of the dough was much greater than noticed here. A little fire is left around the pizza to enhance browning of the top. Pizza is done in less than 5 minutes.

Pizza Perfect!

Every year our little village of Lancaster holds a Fourth of July parade event. Even though the oven was barely finished enough to use, we decided to prepare hand-held apple pie tarts to donate to the concessions to raise money for the event. Many trials were done, testing the filling for just right flavor combination and gooey drip; the crust for perfect buttery flavor and flaky crispiness; the thickness of filling and crust when assembled; the overall size (diameter); optimum baking temperature; timing, etc. In the month leading up to the parade, we had to suffer through a lot of apple tarts . . .

Finally, parade day arrived, and with a crew of five people gathered in the kitchen as an assembly line, we prepared and baked sixty tarts in less than one and a half hours. Because the tarts arrived still warm from the oven, the concession stand had no problem getting rid of them. Pictured above are the four remaining after only 2 hours of the event. Guess we'll just have to make more next year!