While on our Honeymoon, Tom and I had an introduction to wood-fired pizzas. Can I just say that once you have tried homemade food that is wood-fired, it’s hard to look back at anything else.
So, a few years later, when we finally had the priviledge to design our own backyard, it was the key feature we decided to have.
Our backyard measures 6m x 14m. We we first arrived at our house there were nothing but weeds masquerading as grass, and uneven ground. Our backyard makeover was inspired by Jamie Durie, but our budget meant we would be doing lots of it ourselves. To make matters worse, we had both never built anything with concrete or cement, and we where helped by my brother-in-law and father-in-law, neither who are handy-men. Let’s just say I was feeling a little nervous.
So anyway….we researched wood-fired ovens, and eventually found one that met our budget and was a DIY. We sourced our oven from Woody Wood-fired ovens. Warning: if you go to this website they have the cheesiest theme tune out. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
The oven was the largest they supply, and cost approximately $1500, plus transport to Melbourne from Perth. It included everything, except for a few tools you would need, such as:
- a spirit level
- wheelbarrow
- shovel
- pliers
- rubber-gloves
- packing tape.
All you needed was a brick oven base and slab (which we had built for us), and then we rest is like paint-by-numbers.
I am pretty proud of what we built. It turned out a lot better than I imagined it could have. It is the centre piece of our back yard, and we have many gatherings around it all year round.
If I had the opportunity to build an oven again, I would probably choose an Alan Scott oven. That is not to say that the oven we have isn’t good – it works really well, but since having it we have become serious about baking bread, and for this purpose the flue is in the wrong spot and the oven is too high…making the temperature less than ideal. That isn’t to say we don’t bake bread in it, the conditions are just harder to control.
Start with a base
We had our base built for us, but in future, I would be less scared about building one myself. It was built out of besser blocks and had a reinforced slab poured out of concrete for the top.
Our slab is 1200cm wide X 2000cm long x 940cm high.
We left room for a cupboard underneath.
You can build portable ovens, and built it on a steel trolley or trailer, if you intend to be more mobile.
How we built our oven
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