Carl's Outdoor Wood-fired Brick Oven - Picture Tour

Pizza cooked in Carl's outdoor brick oven.

Summer has faded to Fall and, though I haven't written much about them, I've had many amazing food experiences in the past few months. Not least among them was a summer get-together at a family friend's place where he made fantastic pizzas for us in his hand-built outdoor brick oven.

Hiding inside this square-ish exterior structure is a domed oven. The fire is built off to one side, and the pizzas bake on the heated floor. The baker uses the pizza peel (that flat shovel-like thing) to turn the pizza around to allow different sides of the crust to be exposed to the fire.

As you can see above, the oven was verging on too hot, which resulted in some blackening, but the pizzas were fantastic all the same. Carl set up a veritable buffet of ingredients, and we chose our own combinations and watched him put it together. These ovens hold their heat a really really long time. You can start your oven on one day and it'll still be hot enough to bake bread the next day. In fact, the temp will have finally cooled off enough for bread.  (Pastries definitely need a cooler temperature, as I demonstrate below.)

A pizza on the peel waiting to go into the oven...

 

Carl sliding the pizza into the oven...

 

Two pizzas baking...

Carl dressing up a fig and prosciutto pizza...

I couldn't resist all this baking going on and just had to put something into that oven, so Carl and his family graciously aided me in making one of my apple-bacon galettes.  Photos behind the cut...

Here I am putting some dotted butter on my galette...

 

My galette in the oven. At this point I spent several terrifying minutes watching it slowly blacken, but we could not remove it. We had to wait until the dough in the center, under all those apples and bacon, had baked.

The finished galette. In spite of being blackened, it was still really quite tasty. So we learned that the more delicate and butter-heavy galette pastry really needed a much cooler oven to bake in. Also, in heat like that, I shouldn't bother pre-cooking and carmelizing the bacon in sugar. Likely if we had come back early the next morning the oven would have been the perfect temperature.

Thanks, Carl, for hosting a wonderful evening and letting me play with your oven! :-)

Comments

[Julie Saul]

And we were there - outstanding!!!

[Elizabeth Fischer]

We are proud to report that the gourmet chef, Carl, is our son-in-law, and we, too, have enjoyed the delicacies brought forth from that outdoor oven!
Lawrence and Elizabeth

[Pizza]

Perfect recipe for a family get together.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th7hEvqX7CU Sounds refreshing. Outdoor cooking is something new to me but would like to give a try for sure. Cool pictures. Gonna be first on my "to-do" list.

[Jason Baker]

I'm so jealous. I would love to build one of these ovens in my back yard. In the mean-time, we cook our "wood fired" pizza on a gas BBQ grill, it actually works pretty good. I even add some hickory chips to the bottom of the grill for a little smokiness.

Great article, Thanks for sharing. Nice photos too.

[Rachel]

That is freaking awesome. Is there anywhere in Ann Arbor to *buy* wood fired pizza? I've been looking, but haven't found anywhere.

[brick oven on the shore]

I just found your blog....am always looking for other "ovenies" !! (: The photos are great....and the pizza looks fantastic. Love those figs!

[Hearing Aid Info]

That oven looks awesome. I would love to have one in my yard. Glad to hear you had fun using it.