I've been dreaming of owning a wood fired oven for a long time. To me, it just seems like the ultimate marriage of simple technology and fantastic results. Besides, with all the home made bread we do around here, it seems inevitable that it would be high on my wish list. Over the past year I've done some reading on the subject to familiarize myself with the probability of building my own. I figure, I'm a do it yourselfer, right down to the doing it yourself part, so this past week I finally "got my ass in gear" and did something about it.
I started by making a willow frame to help shape my earthen oven. A few days previous, I trimmed the willow in the backyard, so I had ample material on hand. I stripped off a few switches and started weaving a basket of sorts. It reminded me of tying together sticks into an "x" way back in grade school and then weaving yarn around the sticks to give them strength. I repeated this procedure a few more times and added several sticks. When I was happy with the shape, I set it on the floor to let the kids have at it. I thought, if they don't destroy it after abusing it for an hour, then it just might be strong enough to support some mud on top of it.
When the willow was being trimmed, I also played with the various bricks we had in the backyard to envision a base for my oven. With the arrangement I felt would work best with the materials at hand (one of the biggest goals of the whole endeavor) I placed our willow basket on top. It appeared that the size would work nice. I scraped the nice topsoil from our garden and dug a hole in the nice clayey stuff at the bottom. Tossing the dirt into a wheel barrow along with a bucket of trimmed, leftover hay from last year, then adding some good old H20 and mixing thoroughly, we were ready for some construction.
The princess "Cobina" was on hand to bless the work. After mudding in the bottom bricks to keep them stable and in place I started working my way up. When the willow frame was reached, I covered it with some thick paper bags and newspaper and tried to tuck this in to keep it in place. The weight of the mud was pushing in and distorting the paper layer so I packed the void space with some small blocks of wood and a few bricks. I continued on my way up, and after reaching about two-thirds of the way to the top, began just slapping mud everywhere and concentrating on achieving a nice round shape.
After sitting overnight, I was anxious to see if it fared all right and had dried ever so slightly. All looked well, no slumping or distortion had occurred during the night, so I went ahead and cut access to the packing material and emptied it. I now had a pile of small blocks of peach wood that would be returned a few at a time to their former residence, though much, much hotter. After about 6 hours of flame, the outside of the oven was nearly completely dry to the touch. The inside was blistering hot, so I put a large tile over the entrance and went inside for an hour to see how it held heat.
When I came back out, there was still some heat, but not enough for baking some pizza. I tried one anyway, but the bottom was the only thing cooking rapidly. I took it out and re-lit a small fire on one side. After it was burning for about twenty minutes, I raked the coals over to the other side, swept up the ashes some and put in another pizza. This time, the bottom cooked nicely, but the side nearest the flame was getting burnt to a crisp. By pizza number three, I had the heat and rotation aspects worked out and started making some decent looking pies.
Well, there you have it: wood fired pizza from my cob oven. The sourdough cornmeal crust, carmelized onions, mushrooms and pesto were all locally sourced. The mud for the oven came from under my feet. Now that, is local.
So come on. If this looks intriguing to you, go do some reading and build one yourself. Really, they are quite easy. You play with sticks, dirt, water and bricks......how hard can it be? In fact, while making the cob part I was thinking how it was like the adobe bricks and tiles we made as school children back in 4th grade at the Sonoma Mission while on a field trip. Simple technology, simple building materials, just give 'em a little knowledge and watch 'em go!
So, if you doubt your own abilities, then ask yourself: have you graduated 4th grade? Do you have some dirt in your backyard? Love wood fired pizza? Then get to work and make yourself a cob oven. Do it!
Dude. Version 3.0 of my wood fired oven. I finished it the previous week and gave it a test with some pizzas. Bottoms cooked up nice, but the oven wasn't hot enough. This time, I've hopefully learned a bit. The fire had been roaring for a few hours and my backyard was looking just right in the late afternoon light. Right for some more experiments with sourdough pizza topped with yard gatherings and local charcuterie, baked in a handmade brick oven. 
Hmm? What was that about local charcuterie? Well let me tell you about something special. How about local hog and sun dried gypsy peppers (Riverdog Farms), with no added nitrates all tenderly crafted by the folks at Dopo Adesso. Try a "Zingaro" from the newest stand at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers' Market. Come on down and check them out. They had a crazy line-up of salami and paté, rillete and countless other derivations of porky goodness. Oh and get there early. On their first day at the market, they sold out.
Oh yeah, back to the wood fired pizza. Lets see. Two day fermented sourdough with a pesto sauce. Mozzarella and caramelized onions. Mushrooms, arugula and sliced zingaro. Holy flargin' cow I was drooling so hard in anticipation. If only I could cook these without burning the shit out of myself turning them in a 700 degree oven with a tiny handled spatula and gardening gloves. Well, see now, the homebrew is for a good reason I guess.
The first round of pizzas cooked up in about 4 minutes. I was pleased with the results and my sister and I horked down the first round of personal sized pies in about ten minutes. Noticing I still had homebrew left, and that the oven was still hot as be'jeebus, I thought I should take the opportunity to learn a bit more. I went back in, threw together two more pies and continued testing the bounds of my little brick and cob fire chamber. 
Was I happy I continued baking pies. The next few took around 5 or 6 minutes to cook and baked up more evenly. They were crispy on the bottom, with fluffy crust and crisped toppings. I was so pleased with myself that I brought them inside, and despite feeling stuffed already, ate half of each, washing it down with that delicious and morally supportive homebrew.....
