I’ve a real desire to have a proper outdoor wood burning oven (it’s not just for pizza).

The clay and brick jobs are well expensive so I’m wondering if the cast steel Chimnea style things are any good?

I’ve also seen a few books on the web with how to build your own. Anyone on here done it or have anything constructive to add?

Judging from how hot my cast chimnea gets, I’d say it’s probably too hot to actually cook anything. 🙂

I’ve been “BBQ-ing” with my chimnea this summer – came with a BBQ grate that swings in an out. Usually burn wood for an hour until the metal is hot and just embers in the bottom then start cooking. The hot metal kind of works like an oven as well, so cooks relatively quickly/evenly. Stays hot enough to cook for 6 just on the embers….. then load it up with more wood to ‘clean’ (burn the fat off the) grate and provide heat for the post-food-beer-drinking as the evening chills off. Lovely…..

I know what you mean about the pizza ovens though…. on the ‘to do’ list…

metal chimneas are great, get a decent site one if you want to bbq though, the only minor snag is that if it’s not raised of the floor you’ll be bending over a fair bit when you cook, no a big problem though.

Pizza ovens are quite easy to make. There is a section in the back of the River Cottage Bread book on how to make the. Also, other books dedicated to making the. Will locate the details if you’re interested.

Client of mine had a huge oven in their garden – their ‘Wedding List’ was all the fire bricks etc they needed to build it….

Could be a good starter for 10….?

I’ve recently done a bit of digging on the web for plans, expected costs etc after my wife casually mentioned she wanted a bread oven outdoors. Same principle except with a bread oven you scrape out the combustible material after a bit.

Pop me an email and I can send you all the links and things if you like.

A mate built this clay oven in his back garden. It made really good pizzas, stews etc. but took quite a bit of heating up.

Serious question. What’s a chimenea in this context? I understand it as a fireplace! 😕

more like a bulbous wood burner that you can put a grill shelf in.

Im going to build myself a continental style BBQ, with a chimney like these I saw at M. Bricolage the other day:

Cheers Stoner. Never been a fan of the Euro BBQs, they’re too samey… Everybloodyone’s got one. 😉
I prefer the DIY appoach.
Mine (complete with vines and almond tree).

BBQIMG_4759 por kala y simon, en Flickr
I didn’t do it myself though, mine would turn out like this.

samey true. why im not buying one.

going to make one out of old bricks and 2′ concrete slabs, some leftover drain grills and a made to measure gril from ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170493906993&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_1611wt_911

Don Simon, i intend to steal your design, cook superior food and tell everyone you copied me!

Go for it meehaja, you won’t get the views though (or the weather, maybe)! 😉

Thanks all.

I’m wanting to compare the performance of something like this…

with something like this.

Not too fussed about general BBQ duties as I have that in hand anyway… it’s all about the oven bit and how well it cooks. There is a huge cost difference between the two!

Try these. Great results

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That looks good. At least it has firebricks to help regulate the temperature which is something which bothers me about the other ones.

Not very pretty.