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 250 degrees Fahrenheit = 121.1 degrees Celsius, that was 31 hours after firing, a good size arm load of wood!!! If you let it cool a bit, you could dehydrate fruits and veggies real nicely!!!

Rado,
I’ve thanked you several times for your help and quick response when I was a bit puzzled on which way to go. And thanks for the opportunity to share such a AWESOME design with me and who ever else was smart enough to order your CD. It’s a great guide to perfection. How you were able to respond to me so quickly was beyond me, it was like you were sitting at your computer waitng.

Folks,
I went with the Masterly Tail (fire chamber size and firebricks structure) but as you can see I used what was given to me for the Facade. I also found several deals at the brick yards clearance section which most brick yards DO have. If anyone needs help of any kind I would be glad to assist. I would like to build another one just for fun.

As you can see, cooking in this oven is a GREAT time!! We just finished pizza for lunch, and after letting the oven cool for an hour or so, I put two loaves of bread made with half Spelt flour and half Bread flour. They will cook for about 40 minutes and then I will load three LARGE chicken breast’s that we will eat for dinner, OH, the wife just asked me to put in a few cookies ( on the pizza stone) for Grandma to have with her coffee. HA! What a BLAST!!! If any one is thinking of building one of these ovens, think no more, get busy, have RADO send you a cd, You won’t be sorry!!! FOLLOW HIS PLAN!!! You will LOVE IT!!!

I’m located in North Fort Myers, Florida.

Rado, your design is by far the best I’ve seen, I researched this for several months before ordering your cd. Now I can’t say I made it as perfect as yours ( because you are the man!!) but it works fine, it takes one and a half hours to get to pizza temp. Easy to do. With seasoned oak firewood or gum branches, etc. I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy!!!

Thanks once again.

Greg

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.

Picture 3. Milling marks, making pizza/bread peel – To make the paddle I had a slab of blackwood (Acacia) which I had cut at our farm back in the 1980s. I traced the shape of the metal peel and partially cut it out with a jigsaw and circular saw for the straight bits. Then with an electric plane and a sander I finished the surfaces before cutting the integral handle. Then I used a router with a bullnose bit to smooth the edges of the handle but kept the milled marks made by the chainsaw when it was originally slabbed. Sorry I got too busy to take more pics of the finished product, but the final process of making the peel was to rub olive oil into the wood. It took slightly over an hour to make this wooden padddle.

Picture 4. Ready for business – Carbon burn-off full heat up. I started the fire at the front then moved it to the back and then across ready for pizza cooking. The ash was raked across and I swept and gave a quick wash to the bricks.

Picture 5. The first of three pizzas – This pizza was almost perfect. I think we’re getting the hang of the whole thing. We made the dough the night before and kept it in the fridge until about three hours before we used it. You could hold a slice by the edge with no sagging. We’ve also learned to lift the pizza close to the roof for a few seconds to perfect-finish off the topping before unloading the pizzas.

Picture 6. Chook in the firey furnace – It was probably still a little hot for the chicken but we roasted it vertically but close to the door. We still had to add alfoil to stop it from burning.

Picture 7. Cooked chook – But it was however amazingly moist and full of flavour.

In the courtyard, rendered oven with the wall. We made three pizzas as appetizers. This is the still unfinished courtyard. We’ll be finishing the render then paving and planting. I’m going to extend the chimney as you can see. That’s Sam on the left, my rendering son. Others are Anton and my daughter Allie relaxing on the sitting wall.

Here’s Belinda checking progress. How do you like my improvised brush? Still need to get a proper one but this did the job (sort of).

Here’s a close up of the beautiful handle of the raking tool made for me by my neighbour Paul.

Culinary arts with chicken and cauliflower. Next course was a butterfly chicken with a mix of parsley, sage, garlic and olive oil under the skin. In front is cauliflower with paprika, garlic and oil.

The chicken cooked in about half an hour and was juicy and tender. I rotated it from time to time and it had alfoil over it for most of the time.

Then later on we baked some cibatta after raking out the coals and cleaning the floor of the oven.

Finally for the meal tonight I made a pumpkin risotto in the oven.

Tomorrow morning the oven will still have plenty of heat so I’ll think of something to cook then! Culinary art of preparing a fine pumpkin risotto …

- Keith