Temporary oven for Students

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Happy Holidays to everyone.

Here's an interesting request we received on building a temporary brick oven for demonstration. Any ideas?

James

I am a Latin teacher at a residential public high school in Durham, North Carolina. I will be leading a group of about 10 students to Italy in February, and as part of our preparations, we would like to build a temporary, demonstration brick oven in which to make pizza and other Italian wood-fired specialties.

We have plans for a temporary oven modeled on a 12th-century British design. But if you have any information, hints, or ideas about building a temporary oven in the Italian fashion, please let us know.

Thank you for all the information you provide on your website. It is excellent and full.

David Frauenfelder

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I agree. Something along the lines of Kiko Denzer's design. They could
build it in one day if they have nice clay soil. Sunset books also
published a clay/earth design coating a cardboard barrel/sonotube half
that's out on the web. That's a single day build and still cooks
pretty well.

Jim

--- In fornobravo@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Musa" <moose@c...> wrote:
> Temporary ovenwhere i grew up in n.c. on the coast there was a lot
of clay in the soil. maybe an earth oven would be a good alternative.
a question... what is the latin for "i came... i saw ... i ate ..."?
>

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Folks,

An update on the temporary oven being built by a group of high
school students in North Carolina and their pizza-crazy Latin
teacher:

Yesterday we began work on the oven, starting with a base of
concrete parking lot wheel bumps (they look like gray railroad
ties). On top of this we put trapezoidal concrete slabs, like thick
stepping stones.

We began to bend thin rebar to make an armature for the dome of the
oven, then darkness ensued and work ended for the night. We spent
roughly two hours on this.

This morning I completed the armature of the dome in about an hour.
A student and I measured the opening of the oven for the pizza peel
and stacked bricks. In about another hour the brick and metal
structure was finished. It looks like a rough barrel vault.

This afternoon we are going to be mixing clay, sand and straw to
daub the structure. Then we will wait overnight for the clay to dry,
fire the oven on Saturday (fingers crossed for all this), and cook
in the afternoon.

We are not taking digital pictures of this, so it may be awhile
before we can post them. But we are grateful for your suggestions
and support. I'll let you know how it came out. It's supposed to
snow tomorrow.

Cheers

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Pliny would be proud. Enjoy your first pizza, and make sure you use
camel-milk cheese (to be authentically Roman).

James