Wood-Fired Pizza Oven Update - The Mystery of the Hairy Oven

My friends, we have fire.

Sort of.

As you will no doubt recall, the pizza oven, when last we left it, was a pile of clay and sand and straw, all supported by a giant sand dome.

Now, it's a pile of clay and sand and straw, all supported by hopes and dreams.

A couple days ago, I was able, with shaking hand, to cut out the inner door and remove the sand.

Doctor? The patient is ready.

I KNEW that playing Operation as a kid would serve me well.

I see newspaper!!

Kerri thought it was adorable that I was giggling. I am adorable, darn it.

Inner door almost gone.

The middle managers want to make sure things are going smoothly.

The fear, of course, was that once the sand was removed, the entire thing would collapse. An outcome not to be desired.

So far, no collapse...

How much sand is in this thing?!?

It honestly took me about a half an hour to pull out all the sand.

It honestly took my back two days to stop aching.

After all the sand was out and the entire thing didn't collapse into a pile of rubble and broken dreams, we started a very small fire inside. One of the blogs I got directions from recommended this as a way to dry the interior and exterior evenly.

Here we go...

Are you ready?

FIRE!!!

We spent several hours parked in front of the oven, feeding twigs into the tiny fire.

It burned well, so I think it has a nice draw for air.

Now, it needs to dry completely before we can really fire it up.

And I need to figure out why it's starting to sprout hair. Yesterday, I noticed small green shoots growing out of the damp cob.

Oh, please get covered in sprouts.

Especially if these happen to be garlic!

It will be the world's biggest chia head!

I'll figure out how to mow this thing and then I'll build a door.

And then, it's pizza party time!

Wood-Fired Pizza Oven Saga: Part 5 - COB!!

As you may remember, in our last episode, our hero was a battered, broken old man - sore and cranky from having to take his stonework apart and rebuild it.

Now, he is considerably less sore, but his feet are much dirtier.

This is the new, improved stone base.

Top view. With any luck, this one won't collapse.

Now that the base was finished, Kerri and I zipped up to Portland, Maine to get 300 pounds of fire clay. Fire clay, as the name implies, will send a burning hot shot of pain through your back, like fire, when you schlep 300 pound of it around.

But don't worry. I know how to fix that.

The next step is to drink away the pain so you have enough bottles to insulate the bottom of the oven. Of course, I am kidding. I enlisted many, many friends to help with this painstaking process, and, after months and months of sensible consumption, I had the small number of glass bottles I needed to proceed.


Now, all I needed was about 600 pounds of screened sand. Fortunately, because of the digging I did earlier, I had the sand. Also, I tore up the kids' old sandbox from the yard. They don't know yet, so please don't tell them.

I used a hunk of old window screen and sifted several hundred pounds of sand into a big, blue bin.

That is a LOT more sand than it looks like. 

Now comes the fun part.*

*Your levels of fun may vary, Results not guaranteed.


I have to build a flat, insulated cap to cover the stone base.

Chicken comes around for the fun parts. Where was she when I was schlepping 300 pounds of clay?

We mixed sand, clay, water, and straw to make a building material called cob. Tori was giddy with excitement at the prospect of helping with this part. But where was she when I was schlepping clay? Probably with the chicken. Hiding in the bushes.

Cob is traditionally mixed by foot. And, I'm not going to lie. This was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun.

Sand and clay. Tori still hasn't figured out that this is her old sandbox. Shhhh.

Add some water.

Mix it on the traditional plastic tarp, just like they did hundreds of years ago.

Tori really, really liked this.

A lot.

After the clay and sand and water are mixed, you incorporate some straw for structural stability.

The chickens were helping.

By spreading the straw all over the lawn when we weren't looking. Our first pizza may be a chicken pizza.

HA! Nice try, chickens. We got the straw back!

The straw gets stomped in by foot, too.

You can turn this into a fun dance party with your daughter. Or, like me, you can tell her it is a fun dance party as you lean on her for support because you are so tired from all this darned stomping.

And you keep stomping. Or, rather, your daughter does. I was watching those sneaky chickens.

After you have a nice pile of cob, you start building the insulated base with a wall.

Tori seriously loved this part. 

And she did a great job helping.

I did a great job micro-managing.

This wall is then filled with insulating material.

See? And you thought they were just for fun? Nope. 

You cover the bottles with pearlite so nobody can see what you drink.

It looks like a fancy cake. Depending on your idea of fancy.

After you add the pearlite, you chase the chickens out of the straw again and make another batch of cob to cap everything off.

Goodbye bottles. You served us well.

I'll never forget you!

Tori is less emotional about the bottles than I am.

Flatten out the cap.

Have your daughter get all weird on you as you work.

And then pose for the obligatory thumbs-up picture when you're done.

Rather than signing it, Tori requested the we press our toes in the wet cob. It was rather satisfying.

Now the cap has to dry for a while. The next step will be to drag my buddy Ben over to build the actual dome of the oven. We'll probably do that in a few weeks.

Stay tuned!

Day 15 - Hot Sand and The Trash Trough™

Day 15
Walnut, CA - Williams, AZ
Time in Transit - Many, many hours
Total Miles Driven - A lot
View From Hotel - A Small Church and a Soccer Field


I may have mentioned the fact that Tori has some sort of strange obsession with California beaches. Today, possibly due to brain damage from the skull cooking temperatures we have been experiencing, we agreed to take her to Santa Monica Pier, a beach that was attractive to us because it was the closest beach we could possibly have gone to.

Heather and John treated us to a wonderful breakfast at their home and then were kind enough to ned us their Fast Pass for the highway or, as those kooky Californians say, "the freeway" which, now that I think about it, should actually be called "the payway".

The Fast Pass is a small transceiver that you put in your car that allows you to drive in a restricted lane. Theoretically, this allows you to bypass all the poor people who are stuck in the free lanes. It only works on the supposition that everybody isn't going to buy one.

Fortunately, there were still a few people who didn't own one and our 30 mile trip to the beach only took 94 hours.

I think I see L.A.

"Take I-10 west and it basically ends at Santa Monica pier," we were told. "It's completely impossible to miss it unless you are a moron, the likes of which the world has never seen. The road literally ends on the pier."

Much like the rare and elusive Niagara Falls, I somehow managed to miss the pier.

In my defense, it is a smallish pier and the ferris wheel and roller coaster on it only served to further camouflage it.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

We pulled into a parking lot a few hundred yards north of the pier so that Tori could have the experience of walking along the beach.

Yeah. that's it! I didn't miss the pier; I drove past it on purpose.

Santa Monica's scenic bathrooms.

We got out of the van and were assaulted by the scorching sun. Dizzying waves of heat blurred the air.

Convenient "Trash Troughs™" are an attractive feature along the beaches. 

A wide selection of garbage adds a splash of color to the otherwise dull monotony of the sand.

I'd like to take a minute to point out my feet in the photo above. Not because they are beautiful or anything, but because they are naked.

A boring, but temporarily important fact about me is that I do not like sandals. I like wearing shoes or going barefoot. Sandals represent a sort of wishy-washy, vague middle-ground that I don't care to visit.

Generally, this does not pose a problem for me. Generally, I am not trekking across 73,000 miles of super-heated sand, however.

The sun, as it is wont to do, was shining brightly and as a result, the sand on the beach was about 3 degrees shy of being melted into glass.

We began walking toward the water.

"Oh, my!" I exclaimed. "This sand is slightly warm."

We walked on.

"Goodness me," I exclaimed, walking a bit more quickly. "It certainly is toasty."

The water seemed to be getting farther away somehow.

"Dear me!" I exclaimed. "Does anyone else smell cooking flesh?"

I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked to the water, my one chance of cooling my feet, which now seemed to be several hundred miles away.

"Jiminy Cricket!" I exclaimed. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

My scream rolled across the beach, merging with and augmenting the screams of other foolish souls who had dared to cross the beach barefoot. Our collective scream is, no doubt, still causing seismic disturbances throughout coastal California.

I splashed into the water and, kicking aside some of the floating garbage that had escaped from the Trash Trough™, stood in the roiling cloud of steam that engulfed me as my feet cooled down.

We walked along the waterline , passing people with asbestos feet and slightly flattened heads who were selling all sorts of things on the beach.

Fruit? Water? First aid ointment for your feet?

Soon, we reached Santa Monica Pier, which I need to emphasize, I drove past in purpose, okay?

We sauntered along the pier, the splintery wood adding a bold sort of texture to the thrumming pain in my scalded feet. Fortunately, the pier is designed specifically to keep your mind away from the pain you are in so you can spend money.

You can sign up for trapeze classes. 

You can purchase a seven inch long Bob Marley joint from these kids who were rolling one on the pier.
In front of the police.

You can get some imported chain restaurant food.

You can take a  ride in the DEA helicopter, circling the pier, looking for those kids with the joint.

You can go play "What's This? Will It Kill Me?" in one of the mysterious spiral piles of garbage along the beach.

You can gaze in awe-struck wonder at the unnatural green of the water near the pier.

You can be my daughter, pretending that you are modeling this year's white dress line.

You can match wits against Sam, The Savage Seagull as he tries to steal the food you just bought at that crappy chain restaurant.

When we had absorbed all the fun, sun, pain, and splinters our feet could handle, we began the long, arduous walk back across the burning Sands of Endless Suffering to Towanda, who was baking in the sun, eager to incinerate us with a blast of hell-fire as we opened the doors.

We made a quick stop back to Heather and John's to return their PayWayPass (thanks, guys!) and then, we headed off to Arizona to see The Grand Canyon.

I'm amazed that almost every state we traveled in, west of Illinois, had parts that looked exactly like this.

This little rainbow nub tried and tried, but he just couldn't make it.

This is NOT The Grand Canyon.

A scant 7 hours and 413 miles later, there we were, in Williams, AZ, near the south entrance to The Grand Canyon.

At 11:30 at night.

We decided that it would probably be easier to see in the daylight and we got a hotel.

My only requirement for the night, excluding the requirement that no cars come crashing through the front wall of my room as I sleep, was that there was an ice machine so I could cool the burns on my feet.

Tomorrow: Scenic Photos of Morons at The Grand Canyon and Horrifying Medical Grade pictures of the actual burns and blisters on the soles of my feet.