Today I'm starting this blog, because I realize building a brick oven in our backyard is going to need some documentation.
Here is a little history: Roughly five months ago I saw an ad in a Three Rivers Park brochure advertising a class for building your own 'Portable Brick Oven'. I personally had a conflict the day of the class, but told Scott, "I think you and the girls should attend the class. Wouldn't it be fun to cook pizzas in our backyard?" Since that time I have spent hours, and I'm talking probably more than 60 hours, researching brick ovens on the internet, purchasing books, joining clubs, visiting the library for masonry books, and dreaming about having an oven in my backyard. How did it go from one small portable oven to a full outdoor kitchen? Short answer: My name is Rae Ann Vandeputte. I can become a little obsessive.
After seeing David S. Cargo's class description for building a portable brick oven, I started looking on the internet. What is a brick oven? What do you use it for? What do they look like? How are they built? The amount of information was overwhelming. And yet at the same time, the project has been challenging. All the information is written by DIYers like myself. Much of the information contradicts one another, so it has been challenging.
Here are just a couple phases I went through ...
- A small portable oven will be fun. The portable brick oven class I first read about seemed perfect. I would spend a small amount of money buying firebrick, stack them together to form an oven, bake some pizzas. Perfect. But after looking at other ovens on the internet, and seeing how beautiful they can be on one's backyard, I had to have a permanent one of my own.
- I'm going to start selling bread for a living. You may be laughing, but for a short time I wanted to build the biggest and most robust oven out there. One that could produce 50 loaves of bread at a time, so I could ... oh, I don't know. Sell it? Throw it away? Bragging rights to say I can bake 50 loaves of bread in my oven? I hooked up with the Saint Paul Bread Club, liked their Facebook page, and attended one of their meetings. A couple weeks later I said, "What am I doing? Isn't this simply about the party I will have in my backyard once this oven is built?" So the bread making business went away. My new goal: Make an oven that could compliment my need to host a party. Focus on pizzas. Breads would be nice, but aren't the priority.
- I'm hosting an oven building workshop at my home. I quickly learned there are several different types of ovens; cob (one made of mud and grass), temporary brick ovens, permanent ovens, etc. I felt as if an Alan Scott style oven is what I needed. Alan was praised on the internet as the oven building expert. I bought his book and started reading. It didn't take me long to realize this project would take some effort, and therefore put my skills to work by recruiting an instructor to teach a brick building workshop at my home. It was to be held the weekend of July 13-15, where attendees would pay me $200 to attend my workshop where the instructor would teach everyone to build an oven while ... he built mine! Seemed perfect. But after the response to the class was slower than I hoped, and Derek came up with a conflict, I cancelled the class. Now what?
