51 replies to this topic

[karl]

Italian wines but no stone-baked pizza! It's going to change! The pizza oven project is launched and excavation started. See pictures. I will keep you posted.

 Pizzaproject_001.gif   122.08K   161 downloads  Pizzaproject_002.jpg   58.71K   193 downloads

Regards from karl

[NorthernWiner]

Wow... nice! How big will it be when finished?

[dagobob]

Italian wines but no stone-baked pizza! It's going to change! The pizza oven project is launched and excavation started. See pictures. I will keep you posted.

 Pizzaproject_001.gif   122.08K   161 downloads  Pizzaproject_002.jpg   58.71K   193 downloads

Regards from karl

Now we're talking !!
My goal when I retire is to open a "real Italian" Pizzeria, and of course that means wood fired.
Just serve Pizza and wine; no deliveries, if you wings and crap you can go somewhere else.
Just good wood fired pizza and good wine. Simple, eh ?

I will be anxiously awaiting the details of your outdoor project.
My home has a large outdoor fireplace, but it's a conventional (60's style) fireplace where the grill sets up front and the chimney in the back. I can't for the life of me figure out how to modify it to bake pizza's.

[ryanprel]

This has been a project on my list for a while now too, but I don't want to do it until I know where I'll be permanently so that I could place it close to the house, which will be close to the vineyard, hopefully. I'll be watching this closely to see how you design it. Thanks for posting it here with pictures!

[D'Augustine Vineyard]

Hey Karl,

You're in for some fun. What plans are you using for your oven or are you designing it yourself? We used Alan Scott's plans to build our oven. We still have to finish our chimney and do the facade/finish work, but we've been cooking in it for quite some time. The pizza is amazing, but don't forget all the other things you can cook in it too. Because we like to be energy efficient here and it usually takes about 5 hours or so to heat the oven, we like to plan for cooking a whole bunch of things, many of which we eat later.

For example, we'll make some pizza and then after the oven's temp has dropped we'll throw in some lamb or chicken to roast, followed later by crackers or a dessert of some kind. Or we'll bake bread and then put a stew in for a slow braise. It can be some work to plan to cook this way, but the flip side is it's fun and you have delicious meals prepared for several days afterward. It's a great way to spend a Sunday.

I think I've posted this before but here's a link to a slideshow on youtube of showing the evolution of our oven. Our masonry skills are somewhat lacking but it turned out pretty well (so far anyway).

And here's my favorite wood oven video on youtube to really get you in the mood:


Have fun! You'll love it and the work to build the oven really will be worth it.

Heather

[gregorio]

Nice Karl! You are going to love it! The kids love creating interesting pizza topping combinations. Some of them have actually turned out pretty great!

Heather,
Why does your oven take so long to heat? Our large wood fired Mugnani takes about 90 minutes. I wonder why the differnce? Also, how do you like roasting meats in it? Ribs are awesome but keeping the temps right is critical to prevent "auto ignition"

Greg

Hey Karl,

You're in for some fun. What plans are you using for your oven or are you designing it yourself? We used Alan Scott's plans to build our oven. We still have to finish our chimney and do the facade/finish work, but we've been cooking in it for quite some time. The pizza is amazing, but don't forget all the other things you can cook in it too. Because we like to be energy efficient here and it usually takes about 5 hours or so to heat the oven, we like to plan for cooking a whole bunch of things, many of which we eat later.

For example, we'll make some pizza and then after the oven's temp has dropped we'll throw in some lamb or chicken to roast, followed later by crackers or a dessert of some kind. Or we'll bake bread and then put a stew in for a slow braise. It can be some work to plan to cook this way, but the flip side is it's fun and you have delicious meals prepared for several days afterward. It's a great way to spend a Sunday.

I think I've posted this before but here's a link to a slideshow on youtube of showing the evolution of our oven. Our masonry skills are somewhat lacking but it turned out pretty well (so far anyway). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhE70a8HC6E

And here's my favorite wood oven video on youtube to really get you in the mood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTWGeyew5oI

Have fun! You'll love it and the work to build the oven really will be worth it.

Heather

[D'Augustine Vineyard]

Heather,
Why does your oven take so long to heat? Our large wood fired Mugnani takes about 90 minutes. I wonder why the differnce? Also, how do you like roasting meats in it? Ribs are awesome but keeping the temps right is critical to prevent "auto ignition"

Greg

Our oven has a 24 loaf capacity and is designed to retain heat for multiple bakes. The five hour heating puts heat deep into the oven and then it slowly radiates into the center. This is more important for the type of cooking where you heat the oven and then take the fire out and use the residual heat to bake, which we do a lot. It probably wouldn't be necessary if we're just going to knock out a couple of pizzas, but we rarely do that. If we make pizza it's usually for 20-70 people and the oven is going for a long time so the deep heat helps keep the oven nice and hot over time.

We take the fire out for bread and usually for roast meat too. The meat comes out fantastic. We don't usually put 24 loaves of bread at a time because you have to stuff them so close together, but we've been known to put 12 pitas, then a couple dozen bagels and then a dozen ciabattas. We give a lot away to friends and bread freezes really well so when we bake, we usually bake a lot. The only roast meat we've cooked with the fire still in was a giant pork butt (I think that was the cut). It got black on the outside, but inside was amazing.

We generally fill the oven full of wood in the morning and light it up in the front of the oven and over the course of about 5 hours it burns to the back of the oven. Then depending on what we're doing we either build a small fire in the back and start making pizza or we rake out the coals, mop it up, close the door and wait for the heat to be at the level we need.

Which reminds me - Karl - if you don't have a lot of experience with a wood oven, I would recommend that you work a temperature probe into your hearth and dome at least. It's really helpful as you're first getting used to the oven to know what temperatures you're working with.

Heather

[HonkingGooseWine]

Italian wines but no stone-baked pizza! It's going to change! The pizza oven project is launched and excavation started. See pictures. I will keep you posted.

 Pizzaproject_001.gif   122.08K   161 downloads  Pizzaproject_002.jpg   58.71K   193 downloads

Regards from karl

I will look forward to watching your progress as I have a pizza oven on my project list. Just haven't got it going yet. If you haven't already you should check out the Forno Bravo web site they offer a free instruction manual on how to build a round oven that is mainly for pizza. From what I've heard they heat up faster and can be maid from the plans and forum help.

http://www.fornobrav...mpeii_oven.html
http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/

Frank

[karl]

If you haven't already you should check out the Forno Bravo web site

Thats the drawings i am using Frank. The Forno drawings for a 36" oven.

regards from Karl

[gregorio]

Our oven has a 24 loaf capacity and is designed to retain heat for multiple bakes. The five hour heating puts heat deep into the oven and then it slowly radiates into the center. This is more important for the type of cooking where you heat the oven and then take the fire out and use the residual heat to bake, which we do a lot. It probably wouldn't be necessary if we're just going to knock out a couple of pizzas, but we rarely do that. If we make pizza it's usually for 20-70 people and the oven is going for a long time so the deep heat helps keep the oven nice and hot over time.

We take the fire out for bread and usually for roast meat too. The meat comes out fantastic. We don't usually put 24 loaves of bread at a time because you have to stuff them so close together, but we've been known to put 12 pitas, then a couple dozen bagels and then a dozen ciabattas. We give a lot away to friends and bread freezes really well so when we bake, we usually bake a lot. The only roast meat we've cooked with the fire still in was a giant pork butt (I think that was the cut). It got black on the outside, but inside was amazing.

We generally fill the oven full of wood in the morning and light it up in the front of the oven and over the course of about 5 hours it burns to the back of the oven. Then depending on what we're doing we either build a small fire in the back and start making pizza or we rake out the coals, mop it up, close the door and wait for the heat to be at the level we need.

Which reminds me - Karl - if you don't have a lot of experience with a wood oven, I would recommend that you work a temperature probe into your hearth and dome at least. It's really helpful as you're first getting used to the oven to know what temperatures you're working with.

Heather

I've never seen anyone take the fire out of the oven before. We build it in the middle of the oven and then when it get to temp, we move it to one side. How long can you maintain temperature without the fire?

Thanks for the details!

[D'Augustine Vineyard]

How long can you maintain temperature without the fire?

It depends on the ambient temperature, but with a five hour fire we usually get about 5 hours in the 500-350 degree range (that's after getting to nearly 800 degrees and letting the oven drop and the heat spots even out). We start with stuff that can take more heat (like pita breads and high heat roasting) and as the temperature drops we move to things that are more heat sensitive (like baked goods with sugar in them). The oven still hangs on after the five hours. We've put a covered Dutch oven of beef ribs for braising and left it over night and it was perfectly done the next morning and the oven was still warm (but not hot anymore).

I think a key issue for this kind of baking is how thick the walls of your oven are. It been a few years ago that we settled on the Alan Scott design, but I remember looking at Mugnani ovens. If I remember correctly the home Mugnanis are really made for the "fire in" type of cooking and are made to fire fast. Does your oven have a door? You'd have to experiment with your oven, but if you have a door you could probably fire the oven for two hours or so, let the fire burn to coals, spread them across the hearth so that it's evenly heated, let them set awhile and then rake them out, mop the hearth, then close the door to equalize the heat in the oven.

For bread making to test the temperature of the oven (if you don't have a thermometer) you can throw some flour on the hearth and see how quickly it browns. If it burns right away it's too hot still. If it takes a good 15 seconds to brown it's probably okay to start baking (as long as the bread does not contain sugar). You load the oven with bread, spray some water into the oven (for oven spring) and close it up. Check it in 20 minutes (maybe earlier if the oven seems hot still) and depending on the bread you are making it will be done in 25-40 minutes. Don't be surprised if your first attempts are not so great. It takes some practice. We baked our first loaves at too high heat and the loaves sprung up to these weird ball shapes and had a crust that was hard as a rock. Now our bread is some of the best bread I have ever eaten. I know that's kind of braggy of me but we really worked hard to get it down.

I have a feeling that with a home Mugnani, you'll probably get just one cooking load, but I imagine for most normal and reasonable people that is just fine. We have a lot of pent up baking energy as we have lived without an oven in our house for 14 years.

Or we're just crazy - take your pick!

Heather

[gregorio]

Or we're just crazy - take your pick!

You're not crazy at all! The best cooked foods are the ones you made yourself!

I suspect you are right about the design of our Mugnani. Even though it is the largest residential model, I have never seen any data on firing it like yours. It does have a door and can easily cook 4 pizzas with the fire in it. The rep at Mugnani offered to give us cooking lessons one weekend. I might have to take him up on it!

[karl]

Which reminds me - Karl - if you don't have a lot of experience with a wood oven, I would recommend that you work a temperature probe into your hearth and dome at least. It's really helpful as you're first getting used to the oven to know what temperatures you're working with.

Good suggestion Heather. Will that be a thermocouple attached to a digital meter ouside the oven? What will be the ideal location inside the oven (for good avarage measurement and not to interfere with cooking? Will it meed to penetrate far into the oven?

Regards from Karl

[gregorio]

Good suggestion Heather. Will that be a thermocouple attached to a digital meter ouside the oven? What will be the ideal location inside the oven (for good avarage measurement and not to interfere with cooking? Will it meed to penetrate far into the oven?

Regards from Karl

If you forget, you can always buy a direct read laser thermometer. About $70 and it fun to use!

[D'Augustine Vineyard]

Good suggestion Heather. Will that be a thermocouple attached to a digital meter ouside the oven? What will be the ideal location inside the oven (for good avarage measurement and not to interfere with cooking? Will it meed to penetrate far into the oven?

Regards from Karl

Hi Karl,

I think it's super cool that you're joining us from Norway, by the way.

Yes! That's right - thermo couple attached to a digital meter. We drilled a hole from underneath the middle section of the oven to 1 inch below the top of the hearth (through the fire brick of the hearth) and another hole through the brick of the dome so that the coupling would rest one inch away from the inside top of the dome.

This probably isn't necessary for what you're doing, but we also placed two more thermocouples at various depths of the 6" of cement that we poured over the dome. This is to measure how deep the heat has reached into the oven - which gives us some idea of how long we'll be able to bake. We look at these temperatures but the readings we use most are of the hearth and dome.

We find the hearth temp to be the most important particularly for items that will be baked directly on the hearth (bread/pizza mostly).

One interesting connection we've discovered is that the hotter your hearth is, the more important water content is in the bread or pizza you're baking. We start making pizza when our hearth is just under 800 degree F. But our dough is a very, very wet dough. We roll the dough thin and it cooks very quickly (great when there's 20-70 people breathing down your neck salivating for pizza). If we put a drier dough on that hearth it would burn instantly. If you like a thicker crust you'd have to cook the pizza at a much lower hearth temperature to give time for the inside to bake without burning the bottom.

You're going to love your oven Karl. Keep us posted on your progress.
Heather