I’m for building a wood fired pizza oven, about 4 feet high, and I’ve seen large slabs of slate (from a pool table) for sale at the salvage yard. Has anyone used this, or what did you use. Not sure if slate will be ok with the heat?.

Cheers.

concrete seemed to work rather well for the guys cooking pizzas at Sonica (festival, in Italy) they made the whole thing out of scaffold poles, planks then just poured the concrete.

Ugly as sin but was on the go for 5+ days pretty much constantly and the pizzas were amazing!

Paving slabs are excellent. Also mono blocks side on and butted
Against one another is ace.
I’d worry about slate but only because Its fairly easy to fracture and ruin the nice flat surface you want.

from memory you shouldnt use sedimentry stone around fires as the heat can cause them to shatter dure to water inside turning to steam

Ask here > Pizzamaking.com

Aye, Mikeypies, that’s my worry. I may go for the monobloc, as I’ve had a paving slab blow up before! Had the BBQ chimney starter sitting on the path a few years back with some fire lighting blocks below. After about 10 minutes, there was a bang like a shotgun going off, and my chimney starter was in the neighbours garden, and the slab had a hole about 10 inches across in it!. Not to mention all the bloody charcoal .lying smouldering all over my nice newly oiled decking. D’oh.

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s943952.htm

A friend has one like this, its amazing how little wood is need and also how much heat is generated – if you leave the Pizza until it looks cooked, it burns as you bring it out.

Only about 18″ internal height.

This guy has about 200 photos showing the build of his oven: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leckig/4988526838/in/photostream/

Slate should be fine, get a nice thick bit. My granny had a slate lined bread oven. I use some left over lock block for lining my BBQ/out door oven. Keeps the heat nicely too (good density etc.).

A mate of mine made a pizza oven positioned on the rear wall of his house and during its first proper run he felt something drip on his head – he looked up and his plastic gutter and fascia had melted 😆