Firing up the v1.0.0 backyard pizza oven for the first time, I guess I went too hot too fast. Fortunately I can scavenge another rock from work and try again.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
144 points (96.8% liked)
Pizza
1499 readers
41 users here now
Friendly community for pizza lovers and creators of all levels. Share your creations, recipes or questions!
Logo by catalyststuff on Freepik (https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/flying-slice-pizza-cartoon-vector-illustration-fast-food-concept-isolated-vector-flat-cartoon-style_10336107.htm)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't really have the time, money, or room for a proper Italian design. My hope here was to get better than my oven. So your cooking surface is straight steel? Im not opposed to trying this.
Right here:
https://lemmy.world/post/17827945?scrollToComments=true
I've taken it much further than this, and if you are interested I can do an "update" post, because while I haven't made any more changes to the oven, I have made some more changes to how I throw and burn the pies.
I just did a friends wedding yesterday using this set up. 16, 16 inch pizzas, in about 3 hours. One hiccup was that some rain came through, and that suuuuucccckkked the heat right out of the oven (since its all metal). Like, i had the temperature cranked after the rain (which is usually ~1100 degrees), and like, it didn't even cook. I had to pull that pie and burn the oven for almost 20 minutes to get back up to temp.
On Saturdays, I take my rig to the side of the road (well not last Saturday -friends wedding and all), and I sell pizzas from 12- sunset down by the local beach. Pretty much sell out. And I feel like I've got the burn figured out to the point where, I don't really mess up pizzas any more, and like, its always a 8/10 - 10/10 crust.
Like I said, if you want a more detailed breakdown, I'd be happy to put up another lemmy post updating my progress with that oven. It was a little pricey, and at first I didn't like it, but now that I'm burning on steal, not stone, and I've got it "figured" out, its fine.
OK, this is rad. I'm not there yet but im seeing a path forward. I'm gonna try out some concrete pavers and work on dough. If the fam gets into this, your project will be the way I go.
But you have enough time to redo it again and again as you do it wrong every time?
No point in arguing with Penny wise pound foolish people whether it's time or money
So I'm gonna try the concrete pavers. If that doesn't work, we'll just go back to using the stone in the oven. Maybe look for a used ooni.
Im not sure why people are getting so bummed at me for trying a diy way yo do it. I said I'd try a couple of times, not suffer the rest of my life blowing up rocks weekly.
You're trying to reinvent the wheel and people are telling you it should be round so it actually works and you're refusing to listen.
It's an oven, something that has existed for thousands of years at this point, the technology is mature and well understood at this point, if people are telling you you're wasting your time using things that will blow up in your face maybe you should have the maturity to just listen for a second.
I'm not refusing to listen, and I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm talking to a dude in this thread about his mods to an oven. I've read about concrete pavers instead of blue stone. It's an interesting home, diy project I'm hoping to have work a handful of times. I'm not trying to abandon my kitchen and feed my family primarily from this. It's a weekend project, not a life-or-death endeavor. The cost of a real brick oven is more than we're willing, or able, to spend for something that will get used maybe 2 or 3 times a year.
And at the end of the day, I'm outside having fun moving rocks around with my kids.