Welcome to the hottest day of the year. Four guys spent twelve grueling hours constructing Moon Grove Farm's brick pizza oven. By 10pm they tested sweet success in the form of a 12" pizza coming out of the oven. Check out the final photos of the build.
Mike's guy friends came in to the farm from all directions to help on the project this weekend. John flew in from D.C., Scott drove out from Ohio and Joe flew in from Phoenix.
They followed a project plan via Make Magazine. The plan claims you can make an arched brick oven pizza in a day. Technically it takes two days considering you have to drive back-and-forth to Lowe's about four times to transport a ridiculous amount of cinderblocks and fire bricks.
We used clay to coat the build. Over the next month, we'll add on a clay chimney and likely a front door to help the structure retain heat better. Eventually we'll add mortar to lock the design in.
In addition to having one pizza baked in the oven, we did make some bonus pizzas inside in the kitchen. I tried out a recipe from Epicurious for pizza dough, and it was delicious. Takes about 90 minutes to prepare, let rise and roll out. Topped the pizza with garlic tomato sauce, fresh ricotta from Prairie Fruits Farm, fresh basil and some shredded mozzarella with a pinch of salt. Delicious way to celebrate!