The Brick Oven Page

Pizza Oven Plans
Forno Bravo has a great series of e-books available for free download on its web site (registration required).
Included are step by step plans for 3 styles of authentic Italian brick pizza ovens. Recommended.
Also available are oven management, cooking and bread books, and a great pizza book.
(Aug 12/08): James reports that there have been 11,000 downloads of the oven plans, and 25,000 downloads of the other books.
Pizza oven from Forno Bravo plans, by MHA member Scott Goodman

New Forno Bravo Primavera oven manual
Norbert Senf checks out the Primavera oven
Forno Bravo dealer in the U.K.

Also:
Online Brick Oven Forum
The Forno Bravo forum has 5,000 registered members, and is the largest online brick oven forum.

Bread For All
"Everything about bread, earth/mud and clay ovens"
- very cool blog by Stu Silverstein. Check it out.

Click here to order
“So, you want a wood-fired oven to bake bread and have pizza parties? What should you build? How does it work? What else can it cook? As an oven-builder I hear these questions a lot, but the books I can recommend for cooking with fire say little about ovens, and the ones about bread and ovens don't take you very far with cooking. 

So I’m glad to now be able to recommend Richard Miscovich’s From the Wood-Fired Oven. He speaks with the authority of a professional baking instructor (and cook), an experienced mason, and a neighborhood baker; he also writes well, takes beautiful photos, and has a wealth of stories to tie it all together. He’s worked with leading professionals in many fields, and teaches from extensive experience with bread, pizza, meats, vegetables, desserts, etc., as well as ovens, masonry, fire, heat, and more.”--Kiko Denzer, author of Build Your Own Earth Oven

Ovencrafters - simple, high efficiency insulated design developed by Alan Scott. Proven in a range of sizes and applications including home, restaurants and bakeries. Click to join him for a seminar. Alan Scott, 72, Artisan of the Brick Oven, Dies New York Times, Feb 6/09

Click here to order. by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott Definitive work on authentic hearth breads. Includes instructions for building a backyard bake oven. "Wing and Scott do more than get the details right: they get the right details. It is difficult for me to imagine any baker, amateur or professional, coming away from this book without having learned something significant, even profound, about the art of bread baking." -Thom Leonard, author of The Bread Book How to Build a Portuguese Pizza Oven Good set of instructions for building this type of oven Woodfiredpizza.org Good site with instructions for an Alan Scott style oven. August Vanderdonckt's detailed photo record of building an Alan Scott oven. Step by step Alan Scott style oven at backyardbrickoven.com Build Your Own Earth Oven (3rd Edition) Click here to order A simple, fully-illustrated handbook for making an oven from earthen materials (similar to adobe and cob). Provides clear, step-by-step instructions for building and firing the oven. Also complete directions for making sourdough bread in the best (and simplest) artisan tradition.  Check out Kiko's great blog and archive on oven building on ovens and earth art Backyard adobe - We built this simple oven at our neighbour's 20 years ago. It is based on the traditional Québec oven shape, an elongated dome.     Click on image for assembly photos.   Frank's Pizza Oven Instructions for building a loam oven. Good pizza info. Good list of oven links. Building an Horno: the Adobe Bread Oven by Michael Moquin - Detailed adobe instructions. Brick Oven Map on Google August Vanderdonckt writes: The map allows brick oven fans to find out if they are close to somebody who already has one. It enables people to upload pictures, communicate with each other directly and locate ovens geographically. Simon Brookes' Clay Oven Blog Ben's Art - nice selection of clay ovens modeled on "Bread Ovens of Quebec" Ovens by Rado Hand. He has an extensive Wood Burning Oven Website, including oven plans, pizza instructions, and more. Oven for the British climate, by Melvin Nevitt. Oven built by Mike Iapalucci from Rado Hand's plans. Detailed constructions photos. Portable cob oven in France - detailed constuction photos, instructions en francais Stone Turtle Baking and Cooking School Learn how to use a wood fired oven. Prefabricated Ovens - These can simplify the construction process a great deal Fornobravo: precast and prefabricated brick ovens from Italy. The site includes a very detailed set of brick pizza oven plans EarthStone - Good website. Grills n'Ovens - handbuilt one piece ovens from Portugal, starting at $1,500.00. The site also has oven building instructions. Mugnaini Imports - California company importing high quality Italian ovens. Wildwood Ovens & BBQs - Pizza ovens, Brazilian BBQ's, Commercial Churrasqueiras Renato Precast Ovens - the oldest oven precaster in the United States. Fayol -Excellent oven made from a unique clay deposit in Provence, France, that has been used for ovens since Roman times. Wood-Firedoven.co.uk - dealers for Forno Bravo, Le Panyol, also custom handbuilt ovens in Britain Beech - Australian dome shaped oven that appears to be very well engineered. Excellent website. Superior Clay - Affordable clay oven manufactured in Ohio Backyard Gourmet - lightweight, assembled Golden Embers - Australia, South Africa Fireit - low cost castable oven from Britain Fired up Kitchens - import 3 lines of ovens from Italy More Books on Baking and Masonry

• Experimental Easy to Build Oven with Alex Chernov
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2007
  
  
• Backyard Oven Workshop with Peter Moore
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2006
  
• Restaurant Pizza Oven Workshop with Pat Manley
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2005
  
• Cob Oven Workshop with Tom Trout
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2004
  
• French Bake Oven Workshop with Norbert Senf
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2003
  
  
• Backyard Pizza Oven Workshop with Pat Manley
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2000
  
• The Best Pizza in Montreal

• One Hour Oven
  

• 
  Pat Manley recently built a kitchen bake oven for Billy Joel
  at his house on Long Island.
  

• Malaspina College Oven Assembly Sequence
  
  
  
  
  Hikary Fukazawa, a participant at the 2003 French bake oven workshop, returned to Japan and built his own oven. Hikari writes:

  Here is the picture of my bake oven.
  Our bakery is going so well.
  Last Saturday we sold out 30 pizza at the Saturday evening market.
  Of course I baked by wood fire.
  Every day my wife Shuko is baking 10kg wheat flour and selling out in a short time.
  We will increase products little by little.
  But we will keep making hand made bread.
  

• Russian Bake Oven Drawings

30 pages
2Mb pdf file




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(above) Amish style "Squirrel Tail" oven at Old Salem, NC- see MHA 2000 Meeting for some details. on this, and on a backyard pizza oven workshop.

Ben Sotero and crew with the new teaching oven at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
details

• BlackOven
  Good site by a brick oven enthusiast, including recipes and baking info.
• Castable Oven
  step-by-step construction photos of a refractory concrete oven.
• Commercial Castable Oven
  good photos of the manufacturing process, including a unique safety test
  
  

(above) Backyard oven by Phil Connor, Britain.

• Traditional French Oven - from Gasogne region, southwest of Bordeaux. Similar shape to Quebec oven, built from brick. A well-illustrated CD (in French) on brick dome oven construction is available from this web site.
• Cob Oven - An Experiment in Progress
  Interesting oven experiments, including a novel firing technique
• Catamount Brick Ovens - Peter Moore Masonry Inc. builds domestic beehive ovens throughout the Northeast.
• Electric Brick Ovens
  • Small Domestic - by Breadstone
  • Large Domestic - at Masonry Stove Builders
• 
  Fireplace/ Bakeoven Combo - Family room fireplace preheats kitchen bakeoven. Rammed earth house, Saltspring Island, BC. Technical design and custom refractory components by Masonry Stove Builders. Phillip Van Horn, architect. Richard Dakin, mason
• Kitchen Cooking Fireplace with Bakeoven - by Biofire
• Custom white oven for a Colonial fireplace - by Masonry Stove Builders.
• Masonry heater bakeoven feedback from Bill Derrick

Bakeoven by Doug Wood. Click on image for more information

Commercial Ovens

Traditional French commercial ovens

Montreal Style Bagel Oven by MHA Member Alex Chernov

Toronto, December 2008

Commercial Bread Ovens by MHA Member William Davenport, Turtlerock Heat

• Little Stream (built by Masonry Stove Builders) - 4 foot by 6 foot hearth, this oven was producing 1800 loaves per week at Little Stream Bakery near Perth, Ontario.

• Montreal Matzoh Oven Rebuild - Rebuild of a large gas/wood hybrid oven
• Building Heather's Oven - construction sequence of an Alan Scott style 4' X 6' oven.
• drawings of a traditional French commercial design with a separate firebox.
• 1930's - 1950's Finnish Commercial - This double deck design was presented at the 1997 MHA meeting by Heikki Hyytiainen and is from a 1951 book from Finland.
• Oven by Pat Manley - construction photos.
• Catamount Brick Ovens - Peter Moore Masonry Inc. builds commercial restaurant ovens throughout the Northeast. Link to his website

Spanish Llopis oven with revolving hearth, Acme Bakery, Berkley. The Farjas is similar.

• German 1930's Commercial - this plan is from a German masonry textbook from the 1930's.
• 1900's American - the oven at Black Diamond bakery in Washington state has been in continuous use for over 90 years. It has a 10 foot by 12 foot hearth. Photos.
• Historical oven in Waterdown, Ontario. We partially documented this recently unearthed 10 X 10 oven.

Sourdough Calculator

Our Excel spreadsheet template that simplifies "baker's percentage" sourdough calculations

Interesting Links

Boulangerie Anna
Anna is my sister in law. She became a bread head about 10 years ago after working at Terra Breads in Vancouver. She now has her own bakery on the French Riviera, and it is one of the best bakeries in France.

The Bread Bakers' Forum
Comprehensive website maintained by Beth Hinkle . Includes brick oven page, including list of builders, manufacturers, websites, books, articles.

The Bread Bakers Guild of America

San Francisco Baking Institute
Bread baking classes and bakery consulting

Cafe Beaujolais - great place, great website. They have an early Alan Scott oven.