I'm Building a Pizza Oven...

Hi guys! Long time no post... Hope everyone had a great summer.

I'm a former egghead until I decided to sell my medium egg setup to buy another offset last may. Like all of us, I love all things BBQ and I also love making pizza and anything cooked with wood and fire. Although the BGE can crank out some good pizza, I was never able to get what I wanted out of it for true neapolitan style pizza and needed more on the BBQ side and decided to move on from egghead-dom. Space was an issue and the medium was hard to get any color or great char on top of the pizza. NOW how am I going to make great neapolitan pizza?

I was originally considering the kettle pizza setup for the Weber, but again I didn't want to take shortcuts because I really wanted a true pizza oven. After a lot of research and back and forth in my head I decided to take the plunge and build it myself. I could've just bought one but at $1100 minimum for a decent oven, I could build one for far less and make it how I want it.

There's some really great info on building your own oven out there and I finally settled on the excessive ball approach. I need it mobile so size and weight are a big factor. It's going to be on top of a 4x4 table with steel wagon wheels on the back two so I can roll it in and out of weather. This will be a process of trial and error like all of these little endeavors, but what the hell.

Anyway, pics to come!

So heres the inspiration for the excercise ball molded oven.

http://www.instructables.com/id/My-135-Wood-fired-Pizza-Oven/

And...

[ame]https://youtu.be/9wSk0chn7Ng[/ame]

Of course mine is modified but it's the same basic concept. No bricks in the dome.

Started off with my basic supplies. The only item not shown is a bag of fire clay and a few miscellaneous things.

Nuco59 said:

I love pizza and my bar is pretty low for what constitutes "good" pizza. Year or so back, I got a wild hair and wanted to make /eat "GREAT" pizza.
I was looking at building/buying a wood fired pizza oven and just could not justify the expense. Just me and the wife- we don't eat a ton of pizza... kids are grown and moved off. I'd still probably make one (love to build stuff) but the hour of warm up time needed just to make one pie makes it not seem to be the best use of one of my "allotment of cookers I'm allowed" (did I mention I was married?)

Good luck to you - looking forward to your progress.

Click to expand...

I hear you. It's just my son, my wife and I. It's going to be a little bigger than I originally thought but I'll be able to get the whole thing done for less than $300 so for me it makes sense. Even if we're only eating pizza every once in a while. I want to see else I can cook in this thing when it's done.

And so it begins...

Filled the ball with air and wrapped it with plastic wrap to prevent sticking. Then I applied plaster wrap to make my form. The videos and instructables that I read all used a table with a hole cut out for the ball or some kind of barrier placed midway to hold the mix in place. I drive a coupe so the plywood table was out and couldn't come up with a stable barrier so I decided on the plaster wrap for my form to make the dome.

Zippylip said:

Has your research taken you through considering a Blackstone? A couple years ago when I was at the precipice of the same decision I zigged instead of zagging & spent $300 on one & it literally has met all of your criteria, brilliantly. Every time I fire that thing up I'm amazed at its simplicity & design genius; I can pull a pie out of that thing that's identical to anything the highest quality local pizza places with WFO's imported from Naples can, without the drive.

Click to expand...

I had not considered a Blackstone. I've seen them and everyone who has one loves them but not something that I gave any thought to. Not only am I enjoying the process of building my own oven, but half of the love that I have for cooking outside is managing a fire.

I have seen some impressive pizza come out of your setup though.

So I measured the finished dome mold and it's 22" across which was what I was going for. I placed my 13" pizza stone under the dome on the expanded metal table and realized that it was simply too small for a fire and a pizza. I could probably figure something out but at this early stage, I already need to tweek things.

Now what... Do I just buy a bigger ball and start over? I really didn't feel like shelling out another $35 for 2 packages of the plaster wrap and a bigger ball. I came up with the brilliant idea of buying a couple cans of expanding foam insulation and figured I could gain some inches in a matter of minutes and then smooth it out with a sander after. Here's what I ended up with...

It's bigger for sure but now I have a giant melted brain blob. I quickly realized that shaping this thing now with a sander would not only take forever but also leave a huge mess.