Hi All. I started and finished building this earth cob oven last year. I kept visiting a building site every day to get the clay/mud mix and then would spend 4-5 hours in the evening treading and mixing the sand with it. Article about how to use a local fire clay collected in the nature for building clay pizza ovens. So far we have cooked pizza’s, bread and roast potatoes, Mediterranean vegetables and roast lamb with garlic and rosemary. It’s amazing pizza’s cook in about two minutes when the oven is really hot. Gauging the temperature is a process of trial and error. I now wait until the outside gets warm before starting the (more…)

Now days they are called heavy and dense Firebricks but old masters still call them fire clay bricks just because they are made of simple fireclay (which actually is the most ordinary mud.) Fire clay can be easily located out in the nature but it must containing the right refractory properties, suitable content ratio of silica and alumina. Some shops call these bricks fireplace bricks. They are used for instance for building cooking chamber in wood fired ovens, for creating fireplaces, all sorts of fire boxes and wood heaters’ lining, linings in a small or the hugest industrial furnaces, (more…)

All refractory are based on fire clay, what it contains, alumina and silica. In fact all high heat resistant firebricks are made of fire clay. Like heat resistant mortars, insulation, pottery, ceramics, ceramic blankets or ceramic tiles on space shuttle, origins of these start from the fire clay, its melting starts at 1600 Celsius °C or 2912 Fahrenheit °F point. Only special manufacturing technologies of those expensive materials change their properties and usage applications. But we are not going to space, at least (more…)

Red Clay Bricks

Substitute for firebricks can be old red clay solid bricks. In ovens these alternative red clay bricks will heat up, cool down, cook, re fire, absorb conduct store and hold the heat from wood fire and perform the same way as proper refractory firebricks do. If you can not locate fire bricks where you are or for any reason obtain them, Red Clay Bricks will perform much the same way in wood fire temperature levels and can be used instead.

How do I see it’s the right alternative for firebricks?

The replacement bricks must be of this type, old solids. Clay body is the same on the brick’s inside as it is on the outside. Break or cut one of the bricks (more…)

Hello to all, this oven design is FANTASTIC to say the least. Here’s a few shots of the oven, pizza, leg of lamb, YUMMY! I am SO glad I went with this, I fire up at 10:30 Sat. Morning after coffee, get things ready for pizza at noon, prep the bread for after pizza time while the wife gets going on what she wants to roast for dinner. Cooking time well organized. It is so easy, and the cooking time with all the insulation effort has been well worth it. After cooking dinner one Sat., I closed the oven door, Sunday, LATE afternoon, around 6 pm I went to the oven, opened the door to check the temp, it was still at (more…)

To celebrate finishing the chimney and almost all the rendering we fired up the oven.

Picture 1. The finished chimney – And also the render on the whole wall is done and it is drying up nicely.

Picture 2. Blackwood slab for making pizza/bread paddle – At the same time I decided to make a wooden peel for loading the pizzas. We already have a metal one for unloading but I thought a wooden one would be fun to make. (more…)

A not too conventional story

Here I am at 50, still in the pink of my condition, beautiful wife, a job that I love, great friends that I don’t have to see too often, gorgeous house in the middle of the woods, a Ford Ranger, with Bruce Springsteen on Sirius radio, healthy kids, great garden and (more…)

Simple pizza. It’s now Autumn here and we’ve just enjoyed a happy and successful day of fun with our oven (building progress). Family were coming over for lunch so I started the fire around 8.15 in the morning. Because of the fairly large amount of mass to heat it does take a while for the soot to disappear from the inside of the oven. Possibly I was not adding enough mass of wood. A note on firewood. I have been using very dry Yellow Box Eucalypt which is very dense and gives very good heat. Belinda had been busy making dough and by midday we (more…)

The base slab as part of a wall. After ordering the CD from Rado I started building with the slab in November 2009 and had the first firings in March 2010. Because this is part of a larger south-facing garden project we decided to build it into one of the walls. It’s been a stimulating and at times challenging project although now we’ve had the first pizzas it has been worth it. Now I’m onto the new learning curve not just of how the oven behaves but also (more…)

Here is a new list with identifying code numbers of the nasty food additives that we should avoid eating. Artificial food preservatives, food colors and flavour enhancers, these are dangerous chemicals added to our food and are known to be linked to Hyperactivity, Attention-Deficit Disorder (ADD), Asthma, Cancer and other medical conditions.

Where to look for food additives on a product label?

When buying groceries, these additives are listed (if it’s given by the law) on the food product’s packaging under “INGREDIENTS:” or “CONTAINS:” section, usually next to “Nutrition Information” but the code numbers or names of these additives can be printed on in a small font. (more…)