Comments on: 10. Heavenly Roast Lamb

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 18:49:37 +0000

Smashing David!

By: David Savage

David Savage — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 12:02:31 +0000

Will – we did make a ‘door’ – stencilling out the irregular shape onto thick plywood, adding a drawer handle, and lining it with cooking foil at time of use having soaked the door in water first.
It works very well when you want to clamp the over down and let it cook.
Temperature readings show that it reached 550 degrees during firing, we let it cool then clamped down seemed to maintain 300-ish for a LONG time (it was still going strong sub 200 degrees 4 hours later…but by we were eating by then so had lost track a little.

By: Simon

Simon — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:42:11 +0000

Awesome thanks Dave. Can you send me a photo to put on here please?

email to: simon.brookes@gmail.com

Best wishes

Simon

By: david Savage

david Savage — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:54:04 +0000

Helen – you are right about the clay…and btw – I wouldn’t mind your contact dets if you are Anglia based – I sourced mine from Chris at Hesketh Potters – really helpful people too. In the end I chose craft crank for its elasticity and although per kilo is more £ than std red, I was benchmarking cost against buying the Spanish style BBQ / ovens…and am very much on the credit side.

Simon- the book is great and has been a fantastic help…it’s a good, fun read as well!
I scouted the reclaim yards for a timber base and was given some jaw-dropping figures so decided to go via breeze blocks (airated type) from Wickes which reduced the cost to a third.
Lessons learned after 1 weeks usage?
1) Don’t hurry it – we live in the UK and until this week the weather has been damp if not worse – really let it dry out well before you take the former out, and then fire it a couple of times (you might as well enjoy the experience and cook in it at the same time
The 4+ hours before you cut the door out turned out to be 4 days for me.
2) Keep it spherical or even dome shaped – if you create too much of a slope then clay chooses the least course of resistance when obeying gravity, despite the former.
3) For the insulation layer – try straw instead of wood-chips….its heavy to work with but once ready builds very quickly in larger slabs.
4) Clay and sand as mortar is ‘ok’ but if I came this way again (and I surely will), then for the join to the brick arch, the arch itself and around the oven base perimeter I’d be tempted to include cement as well….and I may be showing some ignorance here.
5) Julie smoothed the last layer off with a wet paintbrush – the finish is amazingly silky and very appealing.
6) Play with it / experiment on cooking times – these ovens sure are efficient. Sausages take 15 seconds
Pizzas are, as promised, sublime…but tricky. My son found the answer – if you have enough of a flour dusting on the base to make sure it slides onto a plate, then it will transfer easily to the baker’s peel / pizza paddle…but if you are bread makers you probably already knew this.

The next part is an experiment – I plan to spray the dome with Thermacure high temperature stove paint – Almond colour for aesthetics…will let you know how that goes…

Best wishes,
Dave S (dsav@talktalk.net)

By: Darleen Refalo

Darleen Refalo — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:22:19 +0000

Hi Will
Your website inspired me here in Australia, we made our oven over the course of two weekends. Our friends and family love making the pizzas and yes we do lamb most Sundays!
We rub olive oil, mustard, garlice rosemary and honey at the end ! it turns out so delicious evey time.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:44:22 +0000

Hi will. Thanks for the kind comments. I’m not sure why you would want a door in the back of your oven. The front door is adequate. Secondly I have nit recorded the temperature profile of the oven but will do next time I fire it (tomorrow!).

All the best

Simon

By: Will

Will — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:48:43 +0000

Thank you for the excellent information it’s really inspired me and I plan to begin building an oven as soon as possible.

I do have a couple of questions though.

Do you have a door on your oven or do you just block it with something? I like the idea of having a door and would like to know what to make it from.

Also, has anyone taken temperature readings over a period to chart the temperature drop?

Thanks

Wil

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:33:21 +0000

I do think the same technique would work for a tandoor. I build a brick tandoor next to my brick oven in my backyard a couple years ago and I LOVE it. There are a couple things different about what you are going for in a tandoor, though, so you could even cut back some. If you are considering a tandoor, post something and I would be hapy to post some of the things I learned from when I built mine. Since I built my tandoor, I don’t think I have ever used my outdoor grill again….I always just use the tandoor. YUM!

By: Gill Trewick

Gill Trewick — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:23:41 +0000

do you think this principle would work for making your own Tandoor oven?

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:35:11 +0000

Wonderful Nic – congratulations! I’d give the oven a test firing sometime this week so you can get to know how long it takes to reach temperature etc. I cooked a fabulous roast chicken in mine on Sunday which I’ll blog about shortly.

As for photos, if you upload them to a site like Flickr or any free photo hosting website, you can send me the link on here.

Best of luck

Simon