Frenchy's Grub Blog: Build of my backyard Forno (Wood Fired Oven)

First off i'm going to explain that pizza to me is more than a food. It is a passion. It is such a versatile food in the sense of the variables that make it whatever you want it to be. My first real job was at my step-mom's pizza restaurant. I was a delivery driver, but soon ended up cooking. I developed my first interests in different toppings then, but then my culinary prowess grew after I moved out on my own.

Fast forward to the past few years and I'm making my own dough and have pizza at least once a week. I can crank out a dough recipe that yields 4x 12" thin crusts in about 15 mins. Not bad... So after using my BBQ to make pizzas in summer I started to research how to make outdoor ovens. My first idea was to use a steel barrel and line it with fire bricks and use PL Premium adhesive to cling it all... not good enough so I said screw it, let's go for broke.

A few months ago I decided it's go time. Time to start sourcing materials. I went to a used brick place and put 200 4.5"x4.25"x9" fire bricks in the box of my 2009 Toyota Tacoma (bad idea). I also put some raw chunks of Tyndall Stone (limestone) to use for my arch way. Here are some pics of that venture.

These slabs of wood are from my dad's yard. They are Manitoba Maple. The plan for these bad boys is to plane them and laminate them for my door. I'll likely steel line it as well, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

For my foundation, I dug out a 72"x72" space in my yard about 4" deep at the shallowest and approx 10" at the most. My yard isn't very level, but this needed to be. As you can see in the pics, I filled and packed the space with 1/4" down crushed lime stone and then set in sidewalk stones.

Once I completed that part (some of the hardest physical work i've done in awhile) I sourced some cinder blocks from a good friend of mine for my base and wood storage. The plan, make a 54"x54" enclosure to hold up a concrete slab and also to store my fuel wood in.

There are several ways of putting the cinder blocks together. I used mortar between each chain. You can stack all the blocks and fill every second hole with concrete. At the time that seemed like too much work, in hindsight I would do it that way if I ever did this again.

Once the foundation was built, concrete time. I made my form with OSB and spruce 2x4s. I set a piece of OSB in the middle of the block wall up with cinder blocks and jack stands. This made pouring nice and easy out of the back of my truck with a cement mixer!