Rotate as it cooks, but at the end lift the pizza with the peel to the top of the oven for a few seconds to finish the top/center. Don't use the grill, you want it directly on the stone. Also if you do use fresh dough, it tends to stick to metal peels. Wooden peels are better, and of course use a thin layer cornmeal or flour to reduce sticking.

@taoutdoors. We cook a pizza for lunch then put a cast iron pot with stew in for the evening. Two meals, one burn. Brilliant!!!!

I wish I could still do things like this with my dad. Unfortunately his age and Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t permit these kinds of adventures and projects anymore. Cherish every moment you have with him while you can.

A nice bread loaf and some butter in the woods, perfect.

Hi chaps. Usually you would have a big fire in the middle and then rake the ash back to the edges just before cooking. This way the hearth will be hot and will crispen the underneath, I think this is why you had a soggy bottom on the first one. I fire mine for about 1 hr - 1.5hrs and it gets to about 480Celcius. It will cook a pizza in 90 seconds. If you want to get more into cooking in this, I would definitely consider adding a layer of insulation all around the dome, this will keep it hotter for longer and allow you to leave it overnight with things like pulled pork or ribs. A Render containing vermiculite or pearlite is one way to do this, but you might be able to improvise and use some of the clay you have onsite, maybe with straw or something through it to act as the insulation.

There are certain recipes that you do at different temperatures and different stages of the fire, try looking at Townsends for some 1800s cookery, I know one they did was once all the food was cooked, much like yourselves they'd had a hot oven left from all the meals they made and back in those times you wouldn't wanna waste something like that, so they'd have bread dough on standby ready to go for after the meat and beans and other sides we're done, they made literally dozens of loaves of bread with that leftover heat , it was quite something really!

hear in france there is a whole series of things that get cooked in a bread oven as the temperature decreases. First pizza/foccia type quick food with the fire died down slightly and pushed to the sides, then bread after having swept out the fire and quick cleaned with a wet cloth on a stick (to reduse smuts on the bread but also to add humidity), then pies or cakes, then (I can't remember!), finishing off with an over night dish of tourgoul which is like a rice pudding and then with the very last of the heat it was used for drying chestnuts...

Townsend (the american historical reenactor youtubers) have done a few videos about earthen ovens, very similar in construction to these. Those ovens are primarily designed to be heated up by a fire which is allowed to burn out once the oven is at the right temperature. And the point of the oven is that the walls hold enough thermal mass to heat what you're cooking without having to have an active fire going. But that's about as much as I know about these things and how to get them cooking right, haha. Looks like you're having a good time out in the woods with your dad, at least. :-)

What an awesome outcome.. And great memories with you and your dad.. Get yourself a Pizza Stone.. You put the pizza on it then use your paddle to slide the stone in and out of the oven. .. That way the pizza doesn't sit in ash and the stone heats up and cooks the pizza fully even from inside out.. They're designed to work in the home oven in your kitchen but they also work on an open fire or in your brick oven there. Good times.

The closeness you have with your dad is awesome. I love when you two are working on projects in your timberland together.

Try rotating the pizza, or item, as it cooks. I believe that is a pretty common thing you must do in that type of oven. I do love watching the adventures that you and your dad share together. Jax really does deserve a slice of that pizza! ;-) Great job! This new oven looks fantastic!

Large baking tray Potatoes onions herbs chillies A leg of lamb washed down with nice red wine. Nice oven. Or try a tray of lasagna thanks for sharing . Well done 🎣

Get a turkey in there and all have Christmas dinner in the woods 😊 great video guys!

Bread, cake, brownies, cookies, pie... It's an oven. Once you get a feel for it, you should be able to bake just about anything in it.

The char is part of the charm of a wood fired oven. Build your fire then let a good bed of coals form. Invest in a long handled pizza peel. Push your coals to the back of the oven. Maintain a 550 to 600 degree oven. Cook on the deck to draw moisture from the crust. You can bake bread roast meats and fowl. I'll be happy to help as I am a retired chef and avid outdoorsman.

You should take a look at the Townsends site. They have built a couple of earth ovens and talk about how a community would use it and cook all day

I have heard that the fire and coals would be pulled out and then the food put in the oven and the door put in place. Using one is a bit of an art. A remote sensor thermometer might help? Great work guys!!! This oven would bake bread really well I think.

Check out Townsends KZfaq channel. They show how to build an oven, how to cook in it and many recipes for what to cook in it. Great job on this one, with the information and the will power you guys had for this project it is very inspiring and fun to watch👍

I love your dog! Enjoy watching you and your Dad worling together!

Grilling meat over the coals would be a great next meal, as for the pizza you either use the residual heat after pulling the coals out or you push the coals to the sides making a ring around the pizza and make sure the pizza side's are a good few inches away from any coals. Also use the door.

Shark steaks, garlic ,sweet potatoes ,pumpernickel rye loaf ,Mmmm.. .great upload Thank you for sharing 💞

Congratulations guys, it looks great and it obviously works. And you're right, wood burning ovens like that work best if you let the fire burn down to coals, and then spread the coals out along the circumference of the cooking area. It keeps the heat even all around. Or you can just scrape out the dying embers altogether, that oven will hold its heat for hours. You could also drill a small hole in the door and glue in an old fashioned meat thermometer to monitor the temperature. Another successful build, I hope you put it to good use in the years to come!

Roasted potatoes with a small chicken in a dutch oven. If the oven is an oval shape should easily fit the potatoes (roasted on a small rack ) and the chicken at once. Drippings from the bird can flavor the potatoes. Add other root veg to the chicken pot. Great job on the oven, guys.

Charing the sides is the proper way to cook pizza looks delicious👌

Pork belly lads, pork belly... great that you have had your first bake in the masterfully constructed oven.. love from Cape Town.. love your woodland, keep the videos coming.

Brilliant video once more guys, thank you for sharing your adventures again.

A bit of corn meal on the peal before you put the pizza on it will help keep it from sticking to the peal. Let the fire cook down a bit more. Cook it on the bricks to get that crispy crust, but rotate the pizza after a minute or so to keep it from burning on one side nearest the fire. You could do bread, a chicken, a roast, or anything else you'd do in an oven. You can also put your dutch ovens in there for beans, soups, or stew type dishes.

I’ve really loved watching this woodland series this year, it’s been a fascinating watch to see the development of your woods. Look forward to many more episodes.

In medieval times I believe they would build the fire and heat the oven then remove the ashes and then cook, I've seen that in other pizza oven builds too. If your gonna use a Dutch oven or a roaster with some coals in there it should work out! A fish n fowl catch and cook w foraged vegetables would b my choice!

Looks freakin' nice ! Now you can build a shelter around it ! Oven/pizza-oven/heater.. sound like a multifunction build :D

Great table. In many years passed, people would put a board on top of saw horses to make table to feed a crowd. Your board with the pizza on top is in keeping with that idea of, " the groaning board ". Some people still say a full table is the groaning board.

There's nothing like some straight-up bread baking; you just need the right recipe.

If you can get a roasting tray that has 2 triangle mounts one either end to hold a rotisserie chicken. So all you have to do is use a long fork to spin the chicken every now & then plus have some small quartered potato pieces as well as butternut pumpkin in the base of the roasting tray with all the oil dripping over it, plus heat up some mint peas & string beans. Bring a box of chicken gravy mix with some hot water to have chicken gravy over your baked dinner in the bush camp.

I follow a you tube family from Oklahoma called keeping it Dutch. They are homesteaders and recently installed a beautiful masonry heater in their home and are learning the cooking do's and don'ts. They filmed a series about it that was pretty interesting to me. Take good care and your oven turned out really nice. From Millet Alberta Canada.

Looks great, nice oven, you can use your cast iron dutch oven to cook anything in there or many other cast iron pans. have a great day

Your Dad is the best! Great episode, Mike!

Love the oven 🙌 Spatchcock chicken is a good one, simple enough and tasty. I found with the pizza oven (mines bought, not handmade) it's best to let the coals burn right down, the same as you would cooking over a fire,. You get a much more even cook, less charr. And obviously hardwoods are better. Kiln dried wood is really good too 👍 and if you make your own pizzas and dough, flour the bottom of the pizza really well or it sticks to the brick, gives it a nice crispy base too, and rotate it as it cooks 😁

Wonderful oven. I’m very envious. II have plans for an outdoor kitchen on our land, and I envision such an oven as the centerpiece. You may want to consider letting your fire go to coals then rake them along the inside radius. Then place your pizza or whatever in the center then close up the opening. Much more uniform heat thus more uniform temperatures. Great jobs guys. Be well. Good journeys. Happy trails!

Conduction plus convection with a stone base totally changes the time it takes things to cook Try a Christmas goose with all the potatoes carrots and trimmings in one pot

You need to light the oven a good couple of hours before you want to use it, then push the ember all around the outside edge so you can cook in the middle, once hot it doesn't take much to keep it going for a long time, days if desired.

Close to my home is an Italian bakery and they have a brick fire oven in the store. Two days a week they fire up the oven and to make pizza. It is great and as you noticed, the pizza cooks fast. The person making them does rotate them every now and again so that one side is not always facing the fire, helps keep the charring to a minimum. They have a bigger over and along with the fire can fit 5 or 6 pizzas in at one time. I've always wanted to install a tempcast fireplace in my home with a built in over. Make pizza, bread, stews, roast beef, pork, or chicken.

Mike's cooking ...Graham's got to be there bro. Expert taster. 😆Fish not biting i suppose.😝

I was baker at replicated Fort Vancouver (Hudson's Bay Post) some years back. The first skill you need to acquire is to learn to tell temp by feel - stick your hand in oven to test temp. Some use their elbow. You will learn quickly. We fired up the ovens first thing in morning and while it was heating prepared dough. Once fire had burned down we pulled out the coals with a rake and then used a mop to remove most of the ash. You want some of the ash left to prevent sticking. Cook directly on the floor of oven. We used wooden peels and didn't need to use cornmeal or oil on them - I suspect the ash did all that for us. We baked mostly hard tack and loaf bread but when people weren't looking we threw in a pizza. Pizza likes higher temps so it went in right after fire was removed. Other breads like lower baking temps. I've never seen anyone bake in a brick oven with the fire still in there but maybe someone does...

Now I want a woodfired pizza. Thanks. Good job mate.

I reckon you could do a full roast in there! Nice bit of beef with roast veg and potatoes, lovely jubbly!

Great to see the oven in use! Might require some prep beforehand, but an apple crumble out of that beauty would be incredible, especially as we head into the colder months and early evenings! Good work though Mike, keep it up!

Bread is always amazing. Love the videos and Jaxx

the picture-perfect father son relationship

Omg u two. Such fun and a bonding moment. I want this stove.

You can cook almost anything in there. Get a small baking tray and some sea bass or salmon, a bit of butter, salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon. Cover it with tin foil and let it cook for 15-25min depending on how hot the oven is. If you cooking salmon, you could add whatever herbs and spices that you want, Even some carrots and potatoes if that takes your fancy. My family always loved cooking fish this very same way.

Beef joint in the pizza oven and I love this fantastic KZfaq channel

Baking bread in there would be interesting. You could probably make pie with it too. Nice work

Here's a hint on these things, rotate rotate rotate. That helps from burning the crust mostly. Get you a laser pointer thermometer as well. Get the center stone that pizza sits on up to 700 degrees or hotter. That thing will cook fast.

Bring some sourdough and bake a fresh loaf once the fire's died down and brushed out. It'll do it a treat. Or bake the bread in a dutch oven. Fresh bread is really great in the woods.

With the high temperatures you want quick to cook foods. Start with Fish in the roasting pan with onions and chips [potatoes] and even tomatoes, butter and EVOO. Once the temp has dropped, then you cook breads, cakes, brownies. Stews in the dutch oven inside the pizza oven would work well, as the fire dies down but the brick retains the heat.

Great video! Every time I see that dog it makes me smile 🙂

So glad you cut it with a knife instead of a pizza cutter. every little helps.

Guys, the way these earthen ovens are supposed to work is that you fire them up early on in the day, and let the fire burn itself out. When it's burned down to mostly coals, you scrape the coals out and it's the residual heat left in the oven that does the baking. If it was made right, the thing can stay hot for a long time with the door on.

It would be so cool to see a video of you trying to identify all the mushrooms in your woodland

i think once you get the oven heated up, you should push the fire and embers towards the back and sides of the oven, some of the cooking comes from the heat in the floor stones...so you have to get them up to temp and then push the fire off them... dust off the stones of the floor and then set your pizza in place. probably needs turning once or twice during the cooking.... Check out some of the primitive ovens on some of the other channels, like Townsends. Should be able to do all sorts of other things: pies, roasts, breads....all sorts of things.... something like a chicken/bird or fish, either in an open pan or in a dutch oven (which would help even out the heat, though you'd need to turn it....

Man that pizza looks good! Love it, you and your dad have so much fun out there...much love from across the pond!

awesome results, awesome project and awesome surroundings and to top it off you got to do it with your dad!!...now that's totally awesome

Dear Sirs. Please consider to harvest, dry or cook and eat all the eatable mushrooms. There are lots of them. Please consider also to cover the inside and outside of the Pizza oven with clay. But at least the outside. Best regards luck and health to all of you (including the cute dog of course).

video gave me genuine joy

Stone fired hearth trout is awesome!

Well done, boys. Maybe put a damper in the chimney stack to regulate the temp and air flow. For your next cook, why not try a nice sized trout and burn some oak and apple together for the smoke infusing.

When there is just hot coal or glowing coal left you can bake potatos in foil in it. Remember to rotate any pizza you cook in it that way you'll get a more even cooking.

I don't play with brick ovens.. but I do use Barbeque pits and the firebox on an offset smoker will get above 500 degrees fahrenheit... if you have the normal fire.. that's not a bad thing here.. .... You can get even hotter with a big fire... I do recommend cooking on the stone... a dutch over would be great in there as well as your food is a bit protected (and cast iron dutch oven are designed to sit in the fire)...

Please, for the health of futures pizzas, use the oven when there are only embers in there. Just catch fire an hour before and wait until the wood is all burned. Amazin by the way!

Great video Mike keep'em coming bud. Stay safe and be well brother 👊 🤙 🍻

yep, you got it - mostly in ovens like this you'd build the fire, then wait til it dies down and remove a bunch of the burning wood and coals. Then you cook in the residual heat that's when you can put the door on, to keep residual heat in. you can't watch it cook, but it'll keep the heat in and cook it properly from all directions instead of burning it from just one with a live fire

oh yes, good fun! barstool review time!!!!!

Maybe next year you can do a challenge to cook using what's growing on your land

A nice fresh trout cooked in a rolled up newspaper which is soaked in a bucket of water before being put in the oven. It effectively is being steamed inside the wet paper, but it always tastes amazing for me.

Everything is great but I would make the chimney longer (trough the roof) You'll get more suction in the chamber and less smoke in your eyes. I love the pizza!

My friend has a pizza oven and he builds the fire and then cuts it in half, making two small fires on opposing sides and then puts the pizza in between the fires. And he blocks the access door. Roughly 5 minutes to cook a large pizza. And they taste great!

you two are awesome !

Love your guy's setup. Nice one!!!

Love a good success story!!

Pies, baguettes, cookies, biscotti, just yesterday I made an organic and vegan pumpkin pie from scratch its amazing and would love seeing how a fire baked one would taste, better I imagine :)

Check out Townsend channel. They built a small "frontier" set up with a log cabin, forge, well, chicken coop, smokehouse, and an earthen oven. Go back about six months or a year to see how they used the oven to make a fairly complete meal from main course to bread to dessert. Your oven is only slightly smaller than theirs, but it holds heat just as well if not better. The pizza ovens I've seen on YT channels are wood or coal-fired, and they get up to 1000degF (over 500degC) and cooking gets fast and skilled. All you have to do is use a certain amount of fuel every time and cook your pizzas in that heat. As someone said earlier, rotating your pies will help with more even cooking (if you weren't doing it already). Otherwise, it looked good to me. The serving platter was, I'm sure, an original.

I don’t know if it’s still available, but my mom used to bake bread loaves using frozen bread dough from the supermarket. It would be easy to bring them out, throw them in a pan to raise while the oven is heating, then throw them in and see what comes out.

Bake bread in a Dutch oven in there or use a stock pot with a riser inside the pot and a little water in the bottom to steam cook the dough. Turns out quite tasty

Try cooking some nice T Bone steaks in that oven with some nice garlic butter and some nice Baked Potatoes 🥔 yum!

Fish, steak, chicken, pies (meat and fruit), bread (bring some frozen dough it could be biscuits, cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, etc.), veggies (proper roasted veggies), fruit baked apples or pears or peaches, lasagna, kebabs, sausages, bacon. try to rotisserie a chicken or small game hen in there. Don't forget the salad, condiments, butter, and drinks

Aye, good o’l Jaxx is back on the channel!! Awesome episode Gentlemen. I cant wait to see you do a roast in it. Cheers Mike, from California 👊🏼😎🤙🏼🍻

Looks marvelous guys God bless 🙌 🙏 ❤ ✝️🙂

Obviously more pizza, especially with a yeast dough for the crust, would likely do better in there. Also bread and related items would likely do great in there, anything that would work well on a baking stone I expect. As others have noted, a bit of corn meal or semolina flour should help with sticking/charring on the bottom of the crust.

Nice oven. Pizza looks good.

Nice one boy's well prepared pizzas, all you need to do is a running track around the woods to get the weight off. Trout and mushrooms next meal.

You should make a Guinness stew in brick oven. And some home made bread to dip in it. Mmmm

First thing that came to mind was "Well, it's a brick oven you could cook Hansel and Gretel". Oy. hahahahahha Lovely to see you use the oven. It's really beautiful!

That looked like a good 'Square' meal. Jacks lifted front paw seems synonymous with many dogs when they have spotted their quarry, think of a Pointer....

It works! That's what counts :)

When you’ll set the fire in the oven you’ll heat it up. If you use the correct bricks, I didn’t see you build it but you get the fire real hot and then you take all the ash out and you pull everything out and then you can put bread inside and bake it. You don’t need the flame ones that I’ve been gets hot. It will hold the heat.

If I was you I would get a Cast Iron flat plate. It’s the best heat it up before you your pizza in. Great congratulations on oven it’s brilliant achievement Thx for sharing / video BREAD! Mmmmmmm

I think the opening is a bit big and the walls a bit thin. And of course heating up the oven for longer to a higher temperature would help. Maybe cover with clay to add some insulation/added mass.

Get yourselves a terracotta pot/s (dutch oven) and you could do a roast, soups, I think some homemade bread.

Great video. But on the construction of the oven I have a question. Why a smoke stack? A cob oven does not require one. You light a fire, heats the cob, or in this case brick, you rake out the coals, and the brick/cob retains the heat for hours.. Smoke stack or pipe not required. If you are leaving the coals inside, you create a hot side and cold side. Not how they are supposed to be operated.

Townsends had tons of cooking ideas in such ovens