Brick oven + Hard Work = Fun

Cheddar & Chive, 11 Grain Wheat, and Rye breads.

I’ll bet you’re wondering if we’re using the brick oven that Jan spent 6 months building, huh? Yup. Every single week. Honestly, I’m amazed. I thought the hard work was over when Jan finished the masonry. But he’s now making about 20 pounds of dough per week, between the pizza dough and bread dough. It’s usually a 2 day process, which takes up the vast majority of his time off from work. I’m in awe of his energy for this. Although I will say that both of us have been really happy with the way it’s brought our friends and neighbors even closer together. Jan fires up the oven for pizza on the first night, then fires it for bread the next day. It’s not unusual for someone to come over with a pizza or loaf ready to pop in the oven and take home. At the very least, Jan being outside so much makes for an easy target for neighbors dropping by and hanging out.

Preparing the chamber for pizza, by pushing the fire to the edges.

So many people pitched in when Jan was building, and they have all stayed close to reap the rewards. We’re working our way through hosting friends, family, and neighbors (weather permitting) over for pizza. Our house is small, so we can only accommodate about 2 couples at a time (or one family, when they come with lots of kids!). And Jan has been passing out extra loaves of bread each week: french, cheddar & chive, whole wheat, wheat french, 11 grain wheat, and rye so far. The 11 grain is garnering the most attention, but the cheddar & chive is my current favorite. He puts 1.5 potatoes into the dough, then sharp cheddar cheese and chives. There’s also a secret ingredient that I’m not at liberty to discuss, but it brought the bread to a whole new level from one week to the next. Mmmm. Experiment on me, baby!

Brick oven pizza from our own backyard.

This week we even bartered some bread for farm-fresh eggs. This is the life.

Taking it home

Here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

With the outer walls bricked in, Jan had one engineering problem to solve before starting on the domed roof of the oven. He realized that if he built the arches resting on the single-thickness brick walls, the weight of the dome would press the walls outward and the dome would eventually collapse.

After conferring with his father, a former civil engineer, they came up with this strategy:

He poured concrete pillars into the four corners of the outer oven walls. Then he ran rebar around the inner perimeter, and tied it into pillars and brickwork. This keeps the brick walls from splaying outward.

Note the vermiculite insulation which eventually filled all of the space between the outer walls and the oven chamber. This is another contribution from one of our neighbors, who runs a wholesale nursery. This oven is the most collaborative project I’ve ever seen in any neighborhood I’ve ever lived. (Everyone’s trying to guarantee their share of the bread . . . )

After diverting eventual collapse, it was time to install the dome.

Jan built a big semicircular plywood form, and mortared the bricks over that, removing it when they dried.

At the rate of about one row per day, the finished product emerged.

Jan is waiting to close up the back wall of the dome until he’s fired the oven a few times, to make sure all of the moisture has been evaporated from the space. But that’s all that’s left.

Close to 6 months, hundreds of man-hours, and a couple thousand dollars later, we have ourselves and oven, ladies and gentlemen. And a damn fine one.

It just so happened that the day Jan was ready to fire it up was the morning of our first freeze of the winter. How perfect is that? We’re all in awe of this accomplishment, no one more so than Jan! And we are so grateful for the way it has brought our neighborhood together. We are looking forward to many hours sitting around the oven with our friends and family, making pizza and bread and sharing them out.

Bricks for breakfast, bricks for lunch, bricks for dinner

Here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

So, everything so far took about three months. Admittedly, the families (read: wives) were growing weary of the missing husbands. But nothing prepared us for the epic slog that would be the Bricking of the Oven. The four sides took two full months. The dome took another two weeks (a later post). The good thing about the process was that it could be done in small increments. So Jan would come home from work, throw on his overalls (yes, he bought overalls), and lay down one row of bricks. I have never seen anyone so diligently devote all of his spare time to one activity. But even he was starting to go a little crazy.

Jan widened the form used for the oven entrance arch, and made the lower arch with it.

During this time, he also extended the oven floor out through the entrance, using fire bricks.

The slot you see is where the coals and ashes will be raked out of the chamber and onto the ground (or into a container).

Once again, the same arch form was used for this upper arch.

As the walls go up, there is an open space being created between the chamber and bricks. This space will eventually be filled with vermiculite. More insulation.

The open space above and between these two arches will remain open as the chimney.

Our neighbor has taken up blacksmithing. For real. He has a coal-fired forge in his back yard. Anyway, he gave Jan some railroad spikes to use as hooks on the sides of the oven. I love these. They’re so pragmatic. And yet, so cool.

I’ll wrap this piece up with a mea culpa. For the most part, I’ve been the staff photographer on this project. So I came out to capture the rising walls. Now, I’m short. Though I’m tall enough that my feet reach the ground, as my (short) grandpa used to say. Anyway, I wanted to get a picture of the space between the chamber and wall. So, being the former-rock climber that I am, I put my foot on something slightly higher than the ground, grabbed the corner brick, and flagged my foot out for counterbalance.

Off pops the brick, pried loose from the still-wet mortar (bottom right). (sigh) I put the brick in Jan’s hand and slunk back inside.

Insulation

Here are the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

With the oven chamber completed, it feels like we’re in the home stretch. Time to add mass to the oven, to retain heat. This thing is going to get crazy hot. Pizzas are cooked at 650-800°. The oven also needs to maintain high temperature for a long time. Bread is cooked around 500°, after the coals are raked out of the oven. Lots of mass and insulation ensure consistent results.

First, Jan built a removable plywood form, into which the concrete would be poured.

Then Ken and Jan wrapped the chamber with tin foil, to shield the bread from cosmic radiation. Actually, it’s to prevent the concrete mass from adhering to the chamber structure. This will allow expansion and contraction in the chamber, without breaking up the concrete layer.

Next they replaced the form, and inserted rebar around the chamber structure.

Please note the stretch of space on the side of the form where there is no 2×4 supporting the plywood. This will become important later.

Next, massive quantities of concrete were mixed and shoveled into the form. When this project started, Jan and Ken were carefully measuring water to add to the concrete mix. By this point, they were mixing their own concrete from scratch, and eyeballing the water from a hose. Skills have been acquired.

Concrete is heavy. Really, really heavy. So as the boys were shoveling, they began to notice that the sides of the plywood form were bowing out. Note to those who come after: reinforce the plywood along the entire length. Otherwise, you’ll need an emergency retrofit:

The good thing is that this will all be covered up by the outer brick-work. So no harm done. The form came off a couple of days later, and our commitment level ratchets up another notch.

Notice the inset wooden form at the top front. That is where the chimney will be.

At this point, Jan and I reflect on permanence and attachment. He told me we could never move now. This is a funny thing to say to me. I have never in my life lived in a house for longer than 4 years. We, as a couple, have moved 6 times into 7 houses in our 9 years together.

“You told me that this oven was built on a floating slab, so that it could be detached from the base and moved,” I say.

“Well yes,” he says, “moved across the yard or something.”

“Across the yard?” I am incredulous. “What the hell good is that? Why can’t we take it with us?”

“This thing weighs as much as a Hummer!”

“I see Hummers moving around all the time.” Too often, if you ask me.

“But they have wheels!” Now he’s incredulous.

“So, get some wheels for this thing. We’ll hitch it to the van.”

If we do end up hitching this thing, I promise I’ll share pictures.

Going up

Here are the first, second, third, and fourth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu). Man, this is becoming epic. Not just in number of posts, but the families are burnt out! OK, the wives, in particular. Jan works on the oven in most of his spare time, and Lori is close to done with Ken coming over here and leaving her with the three youngins.

Fortunately, the work lately has been very tangible. First, the walls of the chamber, starting with the back:

Then, the side walls and the arch of the chamber ceiling. Jan is really getting a feel for masonry in this project, with the jigs and arches:

Three rows of arch, and a cap stone:

There is so much planning and thought that goes into each stage, before the bricks are cut and installed. One concern Jan had was making a smooth taper to the chamber opening, to facilitate cleaning the ashes out. You can see his solution here:

And from the outside, jigs in place:

Once all mortared together, we undeniably have an oven:

But the best part was when I pulled into the driveway one day and smelled wood smoke. I love that smell, and don’t expect it in the summer, normally. What a treat to see that it was from our oven!

There is still a lot to be done, insulating the chamber, building the chimney, and bricking the outer cladding over the entire structure. But seeing a fire in there bought Jan some patience on the home front.

Chamber Floor

Here are the first, second, and third posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

I’m falling behind on my oven posts. Oh, the horror. I’ll try to catch up this weekend.

After completing the floating slab, next comes the oven floor. The entire oven chamber is built of refractory bricks.

This stage of the process was stressful and tedious. Apparently, Jan leveled each brick, one at a time. I suppose you’ll be pretty annoyed with yourself if you build a several-ton structure, and screw up the part of the oven that you interact with the most: the chamber floor. Besides being level and smooth, there aren’t supposed to be any gaps between the perfectly square edges of the bricks. Here you can see the vermiculite/concrete layer, the concrete layer above that, and the refractory brick layer. Like some really heavy cake.

After such a tedious step, you can imagine Jan’s feelings when he checked on the oven the next morning and was able to easily pry loose the bricks from the slab. Argh! After discussing the pros and cons of full disclosure, we decided it was best to share the pitfalls, as well as the successes, of our journey to brick-oven pizza heaven. Lucky you.

Apparently, Jan had used too much mortar. So the bricks didn’t make any contact with the slab. I suppose that’s why tiles and such are applied with wavy-edged trowels, to avoid applying too thick of a layer. Jan has one of those trowels now. Have I mentioned all of the new tools acquired for this project? I don’t think I have. Not only has Jan added all sorts of masonry tools, but he has also “had to” upgrade several of our more general tools, driving up the total cost of this project beyond mere materials costs.

So he pulled the bricks off, scraped the mortar, and started again.

All of this drama really did little to dampen the spirits of the peanut gallery:

This time, Ken was here to help. So the company and inevitable alcohol made the time pass more quickly. Here we go, from the top (er, bottom):

It was a mental threshold, building out part of the actual cooking chamber. I’m starting to think about the plants I will install around the finished oven. That’s definite progress.

Floating Slab

Here are the first and second posts in this series.

The most enjoyable part of this budding bread oven so far has been the response from the neighborhood. Everyone is so excited about the prospect of fresh bread and pizza. I am constantly amazed at the emotional connection people have to food. On the one hand, making your own bread is certainly laborious, and most people don’t have time for such a thing in their lives. On the other hand, not many of our daily activities bring so much easy joy to others. It’s sobering to survey our daily activities in that context. What do you do in a day that brings joy to someone in the world. It makes bread baking seem a lot less laborious.

The third phase of the oven project entailed building a floating slab, which will sit under the oven vault. Jan and Ken mixed cement with vermiculite, and filled the form that they created previously.

Clearly, such a delicate task required the supervision of not only our current neighbor, Rick, but our new neighbors, Billy and Mark. They’re building a new house on our old street (totally in keeping with the architectural spirit of the ‘hood, by the way – we’re happy to welcome them into our big, happy, dysfunctional neighborhood family).

Next, they stuck nails into the vermiculite mixture, to stabilize the rebar to be laid on top.

You can’t really tell from the picture, but there are grooves ground out of the concrete blocks where each piece of rebar sits, so it is suspended from the outer frame of the oven. The plywood jig on the right is where the ash drop will be: the ash can be swept out of the oven, straight down onto the ground.

Next, our intrepid heroes built a frame for a concrete slab to be poured directly on top of the vermiculite mixture (here’s the floating part). Notice the beer bottle shoring up the rebar in the front corner. That’s key.

Late into the night (it had to have been 9:00 when I stopped checking on them), they poured concrete into the new form.

Jump forward to the next time I grab my camera, and you’ll see the slab a’floatin’.

I must remind you at this point that I am merely an interested bystander. If you’d like real information about this type of oven, the experts are here:

general information about brick ovens

the directions that Jan is following (basically)

Oven raising

The first post in this series, in which our heroes poured the slab, is here.

In this installment, the bread oven reaches skyward. Perhaps my favorite thing about this project so far is that it has drawn in so many contributors from the neighborhood. Frank found some free brick, Rick is driving his truck to pick up materials, and Ken is lending his brawn.

Ken was lured in at 8 AM, Friday morning. The walls were started with cinder blocks, then filled with rebar-reinforced concrete.

The sound of other people laboring brought Rick and Frank wandering over, to supervise, of course. (That’s Frank’s grandson with them.)

More blocks, more concrete, and a piece of metal across the span of the door to the wood-storage chamber, support the eventual structure above it.

Jan knocked and cut notches into the blocks to accommodate a piece of rebar laid around the perimeter of the top of the wall.

Then they filled all of the chambers of the blocks with concrete, tamping it down with a piece of rebar.

Around lunch time they filled the empty spaces completely, and smoothed the top.

Ella approves the final product, and Ken is released to his family at about 1 PM.

You thought that was it for the day, huh? But no. The masons reconvened after dinner, poured themselves some T&Ts, and grabbed the nail gun. That’s our boys.

I couldn’t really tell what they were doing, but they looked pretty cool doing it until the wee hour of 9:00 or so.

In the morning, I got a peek at the result of the carpenter’s elves. Apparently, they built a wooden structure to support the slab of the actual oven chamber.

The support is built in such a way that they can just knock the wood out from underneath the slab, once it’s poured and cured. (Insert smug smile on my husband’s face here.)

I have to say it. I’m impressed. I’ve already invited a couple from a few blocks away to come make pizza with us. That sounds gracious, but the reality is that they have the biggest, most gorgeous tomatoes in the neighborhood. I told them to show up with one big tomato in each hand.

Slab in mind; slab you’ll get

When Jan and I lived in Seattle, we had a great, close-knit group of friends (most of us single, and all of us child-less, so lots of time to bond). One day we were all at our friend Will’s house, brainstorming for a garden structure in the backyard of his new house. Will isn’t always precise with words (unless they’re related to software), and kept referring to the structure as a gazebo, just to have something to call the damn thing while we hashed it out. Our friend Chad, however, being a budding architect, and therefor very precise about such things (as architects are wont to be), was becoming increasingly agitated with Will for pigeon-holing what was surely destined to be Chad’s greatest design (or something like that; it wasn’t always easy to pin down the exact cause of Chad’s psychic pain). Anyway, Chad finally raised his voice and said, “Gazebo in mind; gazebo you’ll get!” At which point we all fell over guffawing. Jan and I still use that phrase.

I mentioned previously that Jan is building a bread oven in our backyard. I should also mention that this involves an entirely new set of skills for him (which is the best kind of project, no?). Mixing, pouring and shaping concrete, bricklaying, dome-building. So there is a certain amount of skepticism with which people view such a project, when the announcement is made. But I’ll tell you what, there’s nothing like getting up at the crack and knocking out a new concrete slab to make believers of your wife, friends, and neighbors.

He dug out the footprint of the foundation, then built a 2×4 frame, and laid rebar and mesh in the hole:

Next, he pressed our neighbor Rick into service by dragging him to pick up the pallet of dry concrete. Apparently, they tried lowering the entire pallet into the bed of the truck. The truck kept settling, and settling, and settling under the weight, until the tires looked like they would pop. So they lifted it back out and loaded half of the bags into the truck, leaving the other half for a second trip:

Jan unloaded the truck, while Rick heckled him from the sidelines. Rick lost a fight with a sidewalk curb in the middle of the night several months ago, and now has a metal plate in his wrist. He thinks that’s a good excuse to supervise the neighborhood projects for a while.

Lizzi needs no excuse to sit in the shade and supervise (by smell):

Everything to this point was completed by the day before. Jan also rented a cement mixer, which greatly sped the job. When the appointed morning arrived, the manual labor began:

Over the course of about 4.5 hours, the slab took shape:

And was full:

At this point, he let the slab sit for about two hours, then came back to round the edges with a simple metal tool (I’m just the reporter; I don’t know the technical names for these things). In hindsight, it should have been done after only one hour. It had hardened a bit too much to shape easily. Fortunately, two heads are better than one, and our friend Ken just happened to pop over to borrow some sugar. Now, you may remember Ken from my previous entry. He’s Jan’s bread-baking buddy, and has more than a passing interest in this little project. Anyway, he suggested that they spray the slab down to soften it up for shaping, and took a go of it himself:

Ken is the perfect edge-finisher-person. He’s downright meticulous.

Here’s a close-up of the edge. I have to say, they did a fantastic job:

So the slab is curing for several days, putting off lots of heat, on top of our high 90s temperatures. We’ve been watering it down several times a day.

After this, Jan will buy bricks and start building up. I think Ken put it best when he stood staring at the slab and said, “Wow. It’s really happening.”

The other half of the kitchen garden

No kitchen garden would be complete without someone waiting in the kitchen to receive the goods. That’s Jan.

Not only is he a good cook, but he’s ambitious. Which is why he’s building a bread oven in our back yard. Oh yes. Roughly three thousand pounds of baking love, right behind our little cottage.

“Where in the world did he get such an idea?”, you might ask. I’m going to suggest that there’s something akin to double-dog-daring going on here. Jan and our friend Ken, also from the hood, both love to bake bread. They share books, compare notes, and chatter like hens when we get together. (They’ll love that description.) Ken now mills his own wheat berries. No, really. I mean, how can you top that kind of devotion to the craft? With a bread oven, apparently.

OK, I’m kidding. It really doesn’t take any sort of rivalry for either one of these men to take things so far. But it sure doesn’t hurt to have someone as nuts as you to come and help mix cement, hm?

It has finally begun, and I’ll be sharing the play-by-play, for your reading enjoyment.

The first step is to dig down a few inches for the foundation slab.

Jan called the city, to ask if there were any zoning issues with building a bread oven in our backyard. Being in a historic district, you never know. They had no idea what he was talking about. “Gas?” None. “Electricity?” Nope. “You’re fine.” They forgot to ask: “Rebar?” “Massive quantities of cement?” “Pallets of bricks?”

Lest you think I’m ungrateful, I am really, really looking forward to the fruits of this labor. Pizza, bread, even Thanksgiving turkeys. Honestly, I can’t wait.

The book he’s been working from is The Bread Builders. He’s been visiting some websites, too, which I’ll share in a later post.