Le oven fin!

When I last updated I was finishing the walls. Here is a shot of the loose vermiculite insulation that covers the top, sides and back of the oven. It is built up a bit higher than shown here. There is also an angle iron that supports the cement board roof I put on in the next picture.

This is me putting the roof on. Fun stuff.

I stuccoed the block. Not the most fun thing I've ever done.

It is finally pizza time. Oven is insulated and the roof is on and we couldn't wait any longer. Our first fire for cooking. I gave it an hour and a half of burn time.

Getting the pizza off of the paddle is a little more complicated than it would seem. It requires more flour/corn starch than I thought at first. Eventually I had it off and cooking.

Initially I was cooking with the coals left over from my initial burn. I hadn't received my temperature gun yet so I think I overestimated the temperature in the oven. I put a piece of wood on and things got going.

The first pizza pie. I made a few mistakes with this first go around. I built the fire and pushed it to the back of the oven almost immediately. I think I should have left it burn in the middle of the oven to get the floor extra hot. I also had pretty thick dough which compounded the problem of low floor heat and left a pizza with half cooked dough and crusty cheese. Still very edible though.

This was the second attempt a few days later. I think it was a 100% improvement in all areas.

This is what she looks like as of today. Mostly painted and we got some torches to mount on the front. We were going for the Spanish Colonial style. Looks pretty good to me.

Yeah, just got even cooler.