In a moment of uncharacteristic DIY enthusiasm I built a very basic terracotta pot pizza oven with my son over the last few days after seeing a clip from the channel 4 show, Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday night feast.

Essentially the oven comprises one terracotta pot inside another with a layer of ceramic fibre insulation in between the two pots. We cut an opening for the oven with an angle grinder in each of the pots and the whole shebang sits on some fire bricks on a paving slap on a stand we made out of bits of wood lying around in the garage. Fairly straightforward so far. We fired it up this afternoon to see what would happen and although we tried with a very small gentle fire to get things going slow and steady, the inside pot has cracked in half. The outside pot is still in on piece (probably due to the layer of ceramic fibre insulation between the inner and outer pots). I’m wondering if the crack in the inside pot which forms the inside of the oven is a game over scenario or can we carry on?

Has anyone built a pizza oven using this method before or does anyone have any knowledge of terracotta and heat and cracks etc.? Suggestions/advice would be gratefully received!

Instructions here: Terracotta pot pizza oven instructions

following with interest as i too saw that and considered making one 🙂

STW pizza oven of choice..

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/theres-a-new-uuni-pizza-oven

May as well fire it up properly and give it a whirl..
An IR thermometer would help (you’ll be able to tell how hot the oven is)

You should be ok. My dad has a terracotta chimnia which cracked in half many years ago, so the top half sits nicely on the bottom half wit a dirty big crack all around from the top of the opening where you put in the wood right around. It has worked fine for many years. So long as there is no chance of the fibre insulation catching fire or melting or something. The inner pot is now probably stress relieved by virtue of it having cracked so little risk of it cracking more.

If you’re OK with the insulation i’d crack on and see how you go.

Well, have added more wood and will see what the temperature is like in an hour or so. I have an IR thermometer but am skeptical of its accuracy. Seems to suggest that things are pretty hot in there. Anyhoo, am making some dough so will update later. I think that the possible cause of the cracked internal pot might have been residual moisture in the terracotta from the pots sitting outside at the local garden centre in all the fabulous summer weather we’ve been having recently.

The Uuni ones do look nice and no doubt work well but in taking that approach there isn’t the same fun for me and the boy (even if the Uuni option does end up being the final route we take)!

The insulation is this: Superwool® Plus Fibre 25 mm 96 kg so I’m hoping it should handle the heat as its rated to uptown 1200 degrees celsius!

Have you got a peel to make the pizza on.. then slide it off straight onto the floor of the oven?
Once its up to temp..350- 400 degC or so beware the pizza cooks very fast!!
You may need to turn it 90 deg several times to get it evenly cooked
Enjoy!!

Terracotta is/should be fired in the kiln at about 1100 so I wouldn’t worry about the heat cracking the pots further just bad luck I reckon.

Whether the crack stops it working properly I have no idea.

The peel has been made from a cheap baking tray and the broken handle from an old garden hoe. It could probably double as a weapon for a zombie apocalypse film but I think it’ll work!

Well, it worked 😀 Tasty, rustic, simple very definitely homemade pizza was made and it tasted fantastic! I will post some pictures once I’ve got them somewhere that is STW-accessible.

Having now allowed the oven to cool down I can see that the internal pot has multiple cracks in addition to the big one I mentioned first of all. The insulation blanket and outer pot seem fine so I shall persevere (albeit cautiously). Right now it is all covered up for protection against the elements until the weekend when hopefully it shall be put to good use for a big family ‘make your own quirky pizza’ gathering. I have a nagging feeling that longevity will not be a design strongpoint (or even a design feature) but if we get half a dozen decent uses out of it I think it will have been worth the experiment.

mashes *like* button.

great work

The peel has been made from a cheap baking tray and the broken handle from an old garden hoe

double great work!

Here are some pictures of the project as it took shape: Terracotta pot pizza oven project

Looks very good mate, enjoy!.

Could just a defect on the inner pot, maybe try removing, reusing the insulating material and fit a new one.

I probably will look at replacing the inner pot eventually. I think I’d dry out the next one I get from the garden centre slowly in the house over the winter months and then see how it goes next spring/summer but in the meantime I am going to crack on (excuse the pun) with the current set up and hope for the best.

Ultimately I would like to build a proper clay/earth oven and complementary outdoor cooking/eating area where the Terracotta pot oven is currently located but that sort of project would also require the proposed area at the bottom of the garden getting some serious attention. This means less biking time……

My wife has also made the (fairly reasonable) observation that given that we live on a fairly wet and windy hill in Edinburgh, my TexMex outdoor kitchen aspirations may be a little ambitious/unrealistic/ludicrous etc. Perhaps its just an opportunity for an over-engineered roof over the hurricane proof pergola!

is it big enough to have the fire at the back the whole time or do you fill the whole thing with wood and then move it towards the back once its heated up?
If the latter, how do you not have a pizza that tastes of charcoal?

I like that, results look good too.

Just come back from holiday in Tuscany – the villa had a HUGE pizza oven, 5ft internal diameter!! My mate & I got all manly & fired it up. First pizza was nuked in about 3 seconds!! When it eventually settled to a sensible temperature it made fabulous pizzas, flatbreads etc which the kids loved!

I’m in the middle of a kitchen extension/ new patio build at home and the kids have requested a pizza oven, so standby for a build thread coming soon.

It’s quite a small internal space; the diameter of the inner pot is about 45cm if I remember correctly (and the outer pot is about 48cm). In choosing pot size I was limited by the size of spare paving slabs I had lying around in the garden. You can get larger diameter pots but they do seem to get quite a bit more expensive once they go over 50cm in diameter. Even with this modest size there is a reasonable amount of space inside the oven. You do have to push the charcoal embers to the back once the oven is up to temperature before sliding in the pizza but with the right sort of poking implement (a small section of plank on a stick!) I didn’t experience any excessive charcoal taste from the pizza base. This was also not fed back as being an issue from the experienced taste test team of wife and son either.

I think that size-wise the largest pizza I am likely to be able to cook successfully whilst still having enough embers to maintain an optimum temperature will be about 8″-10″ in diameter. There will need to be a certain amount of trial and error. You could probably cook a couple of smaller pizzas simultaneously but given that a single pizza will cook in about 2 mins 30 seconds if the oven is at the right temperature then I’m not overly concerned about a bit of waiting. It affords an ideal opportunity to quaff from your preferred craft ale between batches! The relatively small pizza size is also conducive to making more pizzas which is part of the fun too, particularly if you have children involved in the whole process.

5ft sounds awesome! I think I’d need to go into business with an oven that size though and 5ft terracotta pots are hard to find 😀

It was great fun! It’s making finding villas for next year harder as Pizza Oven is now on the list of essentials along with heated pool!!

All you need now is a handy app to help you calculate your dough recipes! 8)

Here are some pictures of the project as it took shape:

That looks a whole lot more impressive/professional than I was expecting from the initial description 😆

Where did you buy the pots at a reasonable price?

Is that the paving slabs between the stand and firebrick floor? You’ll improve performance by having a calcilicate insulation board in there. I’d also be wary of the wooden base combusting without more insulation between it and the oven floor.

I’d not worry about the cracks. Both my cob oven and cast one have cracks. Remember your putting a lot of energy into it unevenly and the stress needs to go somewhere. Cracks in ovens are part of their character.

The paving slab did get a touch warm although not so much that the wood was smouldering but thanks for the advice. I shall look into the calcilicate insulation board and see if I can’t improve things a little. Thanks also for the reassurance regarding the cracks, being a novice with this sort of thing I was perhaps being a little cautious as I didn’t want to turn a fun-filled family pizza making evening into a game of avoid the terracotta shrapnel!

+1

I’ve found a 43cm one for £7 at homebase but can’t find the larger one.

Yeah, ideally need nice rounded ones at a good price! Or else may as well buy a complete oven.

I got my pots on sale at a garden local garden centre that is having a refurb, just under £40 for the 2 pots. I did have to hunt around though. Local Gumtree, Freecycle or eBay might give you a result but the pots are the most expensive part of the oven. Overall I spent about £100 on the pots, firebricks and ceramic fibre blanket. The other parts I had already. If you’re sourcing everything from new it could start to add up and I take the point that for a bit more cash (quite a bit more if you’re looking for a good oven in my opinion) you could buy a pre-built oven. However, I wanted a little summer holiday project for me and my son to get him away from the PlayStation and going for the slightly Heath Robinson approach was a good option to achieve that.

I’ve got thousands of bricks lying around due to knocking down walls at home- any reason I can’t use bricks to make one?

Picked up a nice peel for about £7 in the Lakeland sale the other week in York.

Picked up a pizza oven from BBQBarbecues in their sale for £99, having fun with it and learning as we go!

Good effort, looks great. I wonder if there is some sort of clay you can use to fill the cracks?

I’ve got thousands of bricks lying around due to knocking down walls at home- any reason I can’t use bricks to make one?

None at all but old bricks are supposed to be better. I was going this route but a timely bonus meant we could buy a cast oven and use it straight away. I’ve spent just a ‘little’ more than the op though :(. Have a look at the UK wide fired oven forum. There are bricks builds logged on there.