Brick Oven/Forno Bravo builds?

[Edcculus]

Just curious if anyone here has built, or is planning to build a Forno Bravo, or similar brick oven? I think you can buy them off the site, but there are also free plans to make your own. My inlaws just built one and its absolutely awesome. It makes some absolutely delicious pizza and bread. We've also roasted chicken in it and a few other things so far.

I'll post some pics when I get them on my computer. Feel free to share pics, tips on using and your favorite thing to cook in them.

 

[global_dev]

i have been eyeing those plans for about 3 years now (and blogs where people have built them)... I just really don't have a great place for one right now..I purchased a Primo ceramic in the meantime...

 

[BobS]

I have seen them cook pizzas on one at this grill store. It seems to work great and they have some videos.

http://www.fredsmusicandbbq.com/category_s/709.htm

I would like to have one, but really do not have the space or the need. I am pretty happy with the results I get off my Big Green Egg.

 

[TickTock]

I'm planning one--the 'Pompeii' style (homebuilt using firebricks on a brick stand) though my grand scheme to finish this summer stalled out. I did start planning and cutting the bricks for the stand, having bought 700 bricks from a demolished 18th-Century rowhouse in Baltimore's Fells Point area. Of course my lovely and artistic design is much more labor-intensive than it need be, but hey. . . .

The fornobravo website forum is awesome, and if anyone is thinking of building a pizza oven go there. As friendly and helpful a community as you could imagine. The online plans for make-your-own are great, and the company Forno Bravo makes a wide range of ovens from the small partially-finished kit to the restaurant-ready drop-in-and-go. It's run by a great guy who developed the free Pompeii style plans and put them online even though his business is selling completed ovens! Though actually looking at the plans has whetted many an appetite for an oven but the them reality of what it takes to build one I'm sure has steered him plenty of sales.

If anyone is interested in this and lives in the DC/NoVa/Baltimore area, there is a mini club of pizza enthusiasts who get together a couple of times a year at either a restaurant or a member's house. Last summer we met at a guy's house and sat around and made pizzas in his oven all afternoon. People brought doughballs, cheese, toppings, and alcohol. That and a wood-fired oven is a pretty sure-fire recipe for success.

 

[mcandre]

I built one a few years ago using forno bravo plans. As long as you have some basic masonry skills it shouldn't be a problem. Great fun and great pizza. In hindsight, if I could have easily purchased a ready made internal dome and just built the surroundings I would have done so.


I'll post some pics later...

 

[ouch]

 

[mcandre]

Apologies for picture quality...as you can see I went for the rustic look and it has weathered
over time, it was built from scratch about 3 years ago from mainly reclaimed materials including bricks, air conditioning pipe (flue),
shopping trolleys (rebar) insulation etc.

As you can see there are two chambers, the larger lower chamber is where the wood
and kindling are kept, the upper is the oven itself.

The oven door was made from a reclaimed cast iron drain cover (used when baking not cooking pizza),
the vent draw sits just in front of this to basically stop the heat from disappearing straight up the flue as in a typical fire place.
This is the classic Pompei style of oven and looks just like an igloo where the circular design traps and
reflects all the heat back down towards the oven bed.
This one is quite big with the actual oven being 48" in diameter and 22" high,
externally it grew a little too high, that fence line is 6 1/2 feet so I had to build a step.

The oven itself was a little more challenging to build, a collapsible former needs to be built to support
the brickwork while the mortar is setting. As you can see the oven wall has blackened, that means the oven was not up
to temperature ( at least for pizza) anyway but as I was last using it to cook some batches of bread and slow roast
meat that's okay. If it's fully up to pizza cooking temperature most of the bricks need to be white hot as they are at the top of the oven.

Check the forno bravo site and utube for ideas, they have plenty of detailed plans and styles you can adopt,
you can choose to make it as easy or as difficult as you like. If you are a masochist like me you
make it from scratch, in hindsight I'd make it smaller and buy a ready made internal oven, that's not
cheating that's just saving you a heap of work.

Its a great topic of conversation and we love having it and using it as a family and for entertaining.
Like most things worth doing it takes some practice and time to learn how to use and get the best from
it but it's worth it.

I hope I've given you a taste of what's involved, go for it and good luck.

 

[murchmb]

I would recommend looking at Allen Scott's website and the book he wrote with Daniel Wing. There is an excellent Yahoo! groups devoted to these ovens.

This is one of those things on my to do wish list once that magic ratio of time and money is available. Yeah, right!

The Bread Builders Book on Amazon

Overcrafters Website

 

[murchmb]

I spoke too soon. The Ovencrafters website isn't nearly as informative as it once was, but there are plenty of online resources out there if you look. Here's a start:

Yahoo! brick-oven group

 

[mouscacha]

that's a beautiful brick oven! Wish I knew how to work with brick!