Have you ever wanted to make wood-fire pizzas at home or at the cabin in your own outdoor oven?
On May 14th from 9:00 to 4:00 pm, David S. Cargo, one of the founders of the Saint Paul Bread
Club and professional baker, will be teaching his popular class on how
to build an affordable portable brick oven. This class is the same one mentioned in From the Wood-Fired Oven by Richard Miscovich, published by Chelsea Green.
These portable brick ovens are portable because they can be moved
once they have been built. They are built from stacked bricks that are
not mortared together. If you need to move the oven, you can just move
the bricks and restack them to rebuild the oven at its new location.
You can build a small oven by yourself in about an hour. You can go
from bare ground to cooking pizza in about 4 hours. Class discussion
covers some of the differences between these portable brick ovens and
more familiar designs such as Alan Scott ovens, Forno Bravo Pompeii
ovens, and cob ovens such as those made popular by Kiko Denzer.
The class covers siting the oven, preparing the ground for the oven,
and then the practical techniques for construction. Every student gets a
handout with plans for three different sizes of ovens, their bills of
materials, and recipes for use with the oven.
In the class we build an oven. It’s built to demonstrate the
techniques and how to read the plans that show how the ovens go
together. After it’s built, it’s fired for four hours to get it up to
baking temperature (usually 800 degrees or more).
While the fire is heating the oven up, David demonstrates how to make
the doughs for pizza and bread, for naan, and for pita bread.
Later in the afternoon, the doughs are formed into the proper shapes
for baking, and some dough is formed for a loaf of bread. Finally, the
pita bread, naan, and pizzas are baked (and eaten) and then the loaf of
bread goes into the oven.
NOTE: The class does not provide students with any building materials. The approximate cost for building the oven like the one demonstrated in the class is about $600 not counting any shipping and taxes.
The fee is $80 and you can register on EventBrite. Here is the link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/portable-oven-building-class-tickets-22175623888
