Here comes the stuff...

This was an exciting week, we received delivery of a lot of materials that will be used in Phase 1 of building our oven.  I almost had a heart attack when the semi-truck pulled up with four pallets of cinder block, a ton of cement, and an assortment of boards and insulation.

It's hard to believe that it'll take all of that to make our little community oven, but, if you want something built to last, then this is what it takes. The difference between our oven and some of the "instant" wood-fired ovens that you see on-line is the insulation. Our oven will get hot and the bricks will retain the heat for several days, so that we can utilize the full heat cycle of the oven.  If an oven is not insulated well, you have to keep a fire going, which is fine for pizzas but not so good for bread.

What you see below is over four hundred cinder blocks (used for the oven base...the cooking chamber will be fire brick and the exterior "skin" will be brick), rebar, sand, 2,800 pounds of mortar mix, and 1,000 pounds of portland cement.