More Flames

Here's the third fire to be lit. You can see Alan used the traditional pyramid fire stacking method here. We were having a devil of a job trying to get the fire to go properly. We think the wood we were using was too wet - even though it felt dry. Alan resorted to the internet and watched some videos about how to stack fires inside brick ovens.

Our feline helper, who likes to hang around and see what we're doing, from a safe distance :-)

Alan is making a shelf that will protrude from the front and give him some extra area on which to load pizzas. This is still in progress, what you see here is a test fitting of the frame.

Here's last night's fire; day 5 or 6 I think. Notice how the fire is arranged differently; we have big logs on the bottom and it is stacked with smaller wood as you go up. The kindling burns through into the bottom and gets the big logs going. This works so much better (and we're also using wood from a different supplier which we suspect is drier) that the temperature went off the charts last night; our thermometer only goes to 999F and the temperature in the top of the dome surpassed that. So we should be good for cooking now :-)

Here's a wider shot showing the whole oven. We're going to try making pizza this weekend. This will involve getting the fire going, and then pushing it to the back of the oven to make room. Then you need to sweep/mop clean the cooking surface, before adding pizza. Watch this space!