Brick Oven Revival

I started building brick ovens well into the revival of the U.S. interest in this ancient cooking device.

Brick ovens have been in use in old colonial houses, in native American communities, and in specialty restaurants in the U.S. for hundreds of years.  The popularization of brick ovens has been aided by cooking shows, food and home magazines, and by the word-of-mouth that occurs when one idea reaches escape velocity.

People often think of the brick oven as a luxury item, and to a certain extent they are correct.  Affording a genuine brick oven can be expensive.  The post on this blog entitled, "Brick Oven Cost" is the most visited of the more than 300 posts you'll find here.  In include myself when I state that most of us spend money on what we feel enriches our life (vacation, entertainment, education, shoes:).

Anyone can have a wood-fired bake oven, whether brick, cob, or cast refractory.  There are price-points for everyone.

For me the central reason is the process.

Process part one is my involvement with the food.  Fresh bread is a vacation, an entertainment, and an education in experience.

Process part two occurs when I bring my friends into the mix.  We bond over the elemental way that the food is made.  We eat together.  We talk about the origin of our sustenance.

The process reaches in both directions: backwards towards the growing of food, forwards to how we want to slow down and smell the bread.

When may say that the French and the Italians really know how to enjoy life.  We may envy them their pace of living.  Both countries abound in brick ovens.  You can't enter a town without finding a brick oven in many houses (cities aside).  Brick ovens have never been a fad in those countries.

Revival is the correct word.  As we say in Maine, "La bella vita!"