Portable Wood-fired Brick Ovens

The big advantage of a portable oven is its mobility.  Yes, you can take it with you.  They are perfect for caterers, event venues, and nomads.












The challenge is keeping their weight within the boundaries of a vehicle's towing ability.   This is done with high-tech insulation, the right trailer, and engineering expertise.

Shown here are a few that I've built.  Since companies and chefs seek to distinguish their business, my ability to build a custom oven with an individual look will, from a PR standpoint, as well as its function as an oven, out-perform commercially manufactured portable ovens.

Brick Ovens and Slate Roofs

There is something complete when I build a brick oven outdoors and give it a slate roof.  The oven which takes the traditional interior of fire brick, finished with real stone walls, and with the slate roof becomes part of the thousand year family of ovens built in North America and Europe.

The Shelburne oven, completed by August of last summer, also includes a limestone surfaced work area.

50 Local's Portable Oven

A few years ago I built a portable oven in a horse trailer and designed it in the style of brick ovens I saw in France.  I bring it to Home shows and many chefs have cooked their specialties in it.

A couple of months ago, chef David Ross, of 50 Local in Kennebunk asked me to build him one.  As with all my ovens, I look for improvements in design, and always look to make them beautiful.

Here are recent photos by:

Myriam Babin Photography

myriam@myriambabin.com

www.myriambabin.com

mobile: 917 488 7198

New York Kitchen blog

www.newyorkkitchen.net

Thanks to her and to David Ross.

 

www.myriambabin.com

Build Your Own Brick Oven

Traffic on this blog indicates that there are hundreds of people building brick ovens for themselves.
Great!  I hope that the information contained in many of these posts has helped build successful wood-fired brick ovens.


I continue to recommend domed ovens over sprung arch ovens...and firebrick ovens over cast refractory ovens.  If you are looking for an oven that will not fall apart in your lifetime (or perhaps your grandchildren's), the dome, which has been the traditional shape of brick ovens for over three thousand years is the best choice.

Search this blog, which has over three hundred posts for nearly every detail in the process of building, firing and cooking.  Then decide how much you can do yourself.  I have helped owner builders when asked.  I also have a few workshops in the next year where you can get a hands-on feeling for the job.

Thanks for visiting.
David Neufeld
True Brick Ovens

Cold Comfort

The recent snow and cold in northern New England offered up a unique opportunity.

My back deck pictured here needed clearing.  Deep snow, blown, drifted, and sifted, packed like styrofoam.  Clearing the deck gave me blocks of snow for an amateur igloo, in progress.

Cold comfort...

Inside Job

One of the last parts of finishing an oven is checking the inside of the dome.  To do this, I get inside.

This is the last chance to fill any small spaces in the final few courses of brick at the top of the dome. Not being claustrophobic, it is also a bit of a caving experience and I get to look at my work from a pizza-eye view.  As you can see, setting up a platform so that I lay level with the shelf and mouth of the oven is essential.  I might recommend that you have someone nearby in the event you get stuck.

The owner of this oven, who wanted a visible exterior dome also wanted it colored charcoal grey.  Here's the final face: