Anchovy delight

I was keen to make a pizza without a tomato base and with anchovies. This one was nice.

I sliced some Provelone cheese and laid it on a pizza base. I then added slices of marinated eggplant, anchovies and olives. It looked good, cooked good and tasted great!

2nd bake 12 August 2007

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Sunday morning we decided to have a family day. The oven was lit again (see 'The gentle art of fire watching') and we set about making tasty treats in a more leisurely way than the day before.

We are learning how to handle the dough and the pizzas and everything else. I started with my own anchovy delight and we also loaded in a Gallipoli pide. The younger girls wanted to do some hot dogs the way Prezel World do them and Phoebe decided to make some pretzel twists using a chapati recipe. The chapati twists were fine, if a little fat.

We then went on to cook about half a dozen pizzas. Luke worked the dough in the kitchen - he's turning out to be the dough man. Ingrid and Jenni chopped and everyone else made pizzas. We had a great time.

In the afternoon Jenni made a Chelsea Bun and also marinated some chicken breasts. Late in the afternoon I pulled the fire out. We put in the Chelsea Bun and the chicken was laid in the roasting tray and set in the oven. I closed the door up with pavers and we just let it cook. The chicken was wonderful - slow roasted and tender. Yummy. The chicken and a light salad provided the perfect foil to our lunchtime pizzas.

The gentle art of fire watching

Fire is a living thing and, like any other living thing, it needs to be nurtured.

Nothing I read about brick ovens told me HOW to lay a fire. I suppose everyone has their own preferred method. I've always been good at lighting fires and can get a campfire going from almost nothing, however I found lighting fires in the oven problematic. I finally worked out a way to lay a fire so it gets some heat before it goes out.

I set the fire up using a fire lighter at the base, surrounded by small pieces of kindling set up like a teepee. On either side of this I lay a reasonably sized piece of wood aligned front to back in the oven. These larger pieces serve two purposes, they channel air into the fire from the oven door and also act as a stable stand for large pieces laid on top of the kindling. This method is working extremely well.

Yesterday morning my daughter Phoebe and I set the fire then placed chairs in front of the oven to watch it as it built up. It was lovely sitting in the spring sunshine with a book each, reading as the fire gradually built up in front of us. Every now and then I gave it a poke, moved it around the oven or added more wood. It was very nice.

First bake 11 August 2007

Today we revved the baby up for the first baking. It was a windy day so the smoke went everywhere. We had a fire going for two hours and a little oven temperature gauge kept us informed of oven temperature. We got up to 175 degrees Celsius (approx 350 degrees Fahrenheit) before we started to cook.

The outside of the oven got very warm so I figure we need extra insulation. The outer layer of render cracked during cooking as it had not cured fully - oh well. We'll just add more insulation to the oven.

We cooked pide, calzone and pizzas. Lots of toppings. It was chaos for a while until we started to get the feel of things. Getting used to the pizza peel was a bit of a challenge. I accidently flipped the pides and one of the pizzas but we salvaged them.

Lots of learning - we are going to fuel it up again today.

'Gallipoli' pide recipe

I tried this in our first bake and it was quite nice. I adapted a recipe from Russell Jeavons' Your Brick Oven and have titled it 'The Gallipoli Pide' to reflect the special relationship between Turkey and Australia that was forged on the battlefields of the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.

I used Russell Jeavons' basic pide recipe - pizza dough used as the base and a fill made from a spiced meat. I gave it a twist by using kangaroo meat. The recipe is as follows:

• 500g kangaroo mince
• 400g kangaroo steak (diced for stewing)
• 1 onion - chopped
• 2 tblspn olive oil
• water
• 1 tblspn sweet paprika
• 1 tblspn cumin
• salt and pepper

Fry the onion in olive oil until it is soft. Add the meat and fry until lightly browned. Top the meat mixture with water and simmer until the water boils off and the meat is cooked. Stir through the spices. I made this a day before and refrigerated until cooking day.

The dough was rolled out into elongated shapes and the meat mixture put in the middle. The outsides were then turned over leaving the middle open. The ends were picnhed together and the sides pinched so they would stand up.

The pides were slid into the oven and baked until they browned. Yummy!!!

The picture shows two pides and a friendly calzone sharing the oven.

Curing fires

I have started lighting small fires to help cure the oven, and also to practice lighting fires in the oven. I have always been good at lighting fires (I almost burnt my parents' home down when I was a child) but I am finding the oven a bit of a challenge.

I'm sure I'll master the process of building fires but it takes a slightly different skill to setting a fire in a fireplace.

I'm also using some dodgy wood for the test fires so I'm getting a lot of smoke. Good thing is the oven seems to warm up fairly quickly. It appears to be retaining heat well.

Stage 8b: The top render coat and a bit of tiling

Today the weather was fine and a bit warmer so we put on the final coat of render. We coloured this to blend with the surrounds. I hope that doesn't prove to be a mistake if we haev to make repairs.

We also did a little tiling to neaten off the front. Some small terracotta tiles and a tile border have given the oven a bit of a Mediterranean feel.

I've had a few small fires in the oven and it seems to build up and hold heat really well. The big test will be this weekend. The pizza peel has been ordered and is on its way.

A traditional oven in Lithgow

This photograph, taken in the late 1870s, shows a home near the Lithgow Pottery works. The cottage has many features common to the homes of working families in this period. It is constructed from vertical slabs with a bark roof. The process of cutting and curing bark for roofing was taught to European settlers by Aboriginal people. A large stone fireplace on the left-hand end of the cottage would have provided heating and cooking facilities. The chimney is clad in sheet metal, possibly flattened out kerosene tins.

Most interesting is the large dome-shaped structure on the right. It is a traditional baking oven with an Australian twist. It is made from ants' nests and set on a pig sty of logs. Meat ant nests were used by settlers for many purposes. I have heard of tennis courts being paved with the gritty material and it was also used as a binder in mud structures.

The photo is from the Lithgow District Historical Society collection.

Inspirations

Today is wet and cold so we are not doing anything on the oven, apart from admiring it through the window of my office! I have received inspiration from a wide range of sources and have always intended to list them so now is a good opportunity.

The site I was working with is restricted in space and I was constrained in the size of oven I could build. I had a number of requirements for the build, including use of as many recycled materials as possible, need to locate the oven adjacent to our outdoor entertaining area (yet away from our fence line), and the desire to adapt the existing brick barbecue structure as a base for the oven. I therefore did not build to any of the designs I encountered elsewhere.

I have listed some significant web-based information sources on the links and resources section at the bottom of the page. I gained a lot of information and inspiration from the very comprehensive Traditional Oven web page http://www.traditionaloven.com/ and a link from this page led me to the Ozark Dreams page. This page contains a wonderful step-by-step account of building an oven. Its URL is www.ozarkdreams.com/BrickOven.htm

The first useful site I found when doing a web search was the Australian site of a couple building a sustainable home. Their basic oven information, including oven height, door height etc was really useful. This site is Newton House. The URL for their brick oven is www.newtonhouse.info/oven.htm

I also obtained invaluable information from Russell Jeavons' wonderful Australian book Your Brick Oven Building It and Baking In It. The author runs his own restaurant and builds ovens. He has a background as a builder so he makes a few assumptions about construction techniques but I found his the most comprehensive and accessible account of brick oven building and use. AND the measurements are metric!!!! I purchased my copy online.

Anyway I hope this helps others who are travelling down this road.

Stage 8a The insulating layer

The second layer of cladding is an insulating layer. I mixed 5 litres of vermiculite with each 20kg bag of premixed render to make this layer. Two 20kg bags of render mix were used. I had to add more water to the render mix than recommended as the vermiculite soaked up a fair bit of water.

This layer bonded well to the chicken wire and was fun to apply. We did it all by hand with rubber gloves and also smoothed it off by hand. I didn't float it smooth as I wanted to leave it a little rough to take the final layer of render. If the weather holds we will do that tomorrow morning.

I strung a tarp over the oven to protect the render from the sun. It may rain later so it will also protect from that.