Brick Oven Fictions

Tuscan Room an oven by TBO

Building a traditional baking device into a modern house requires some fiction.

As in all good fiction, the plot must be plausible.  Often I begin with what is evident, the site, the style of the home, the era of the home, and other aspects of what in fiction is called 'setting'.

TBO oven in Ventura CA, with stone roof

Stone oven building in Audrix, France

Pietree Farm brick oven

Even in the most modern homes, there is a line

Art Deco design oven by TBO

of reasoning that went into the design.  As a designer (aside from builder), I am accustomed to noticing the elements of the space that are key in the home design.  These can be carried into the design of the brick oven.

Pietree stone building by TBO

Stone, stucco, and slate cottage by TBO

Older homes, even historic homes, offer clearer clues.  Matching brickwork, woodwork, and detailing from a house might be incorporated into the oven design.

clay oven in Costa Rica

In some instances, an owner wants an 'old world' look and feel to the oven and its environment.  This is fun and interesting. Having traveled to many countries where brick ovens are common, I have a visual memory of the 'look and feel'.

Brick Oven Advice

Some of these posts are advice; most are instructional.  Advice is closer to opinion; instruction is close to factual.

When I write that brick oven domes are stronger/better than sprung arch vaulted brick ovens, that's opinion based on tradition and experience.  When I write that more insulation below and above a brick oven is needed, that's factual, based on heat retention, safety, and conservation.

I've been happy to give advice and limited instruction to people who find me through this blog and on the TBO checklist on my website: http://truebrickovens.com.

When people begin the conversation with me about the oven they want, I ask questions.  Some of the answers are facts, such as the purpose of the oven, the anticipated output, the placement, and the cost.
Other answers are subjective: What are their aesthetic tastes?  Does their family have an historical association with brick ovens or baking?  Will the oven become part of their daily cooking life?

Both sets of statements are important.  When we buy manufactured appliances, we are stuck with the technical and aesthetic choices of the manufacturer (within their product line).

It is becoming rarer and rarer for anyone to have an artisan built home or device.  Even the artisans are under pressure to conform to the manufactured product 'look'.  Certainly, the price point. (This is opinion based on experience).

How do we want our future to look?  Will it include old traditions that are worth preserving, like baking our own bread?  What will our grandchildren know of their ancestor's lives other than faded photos?

If you build it, they will return...

High End Wood-Fired Pizza Ovens

TBO oven (Bello!)

I don't often do 'market research'.  But I am always asked how much a particular size and design oven will cost.  I respond first with questions regarding the baking needs of the customer/chef and soon after we come up with a realistic number.


Last week, I got a typical call from someone about to open a restaurant.  He was looking for a pizza oven and was candid about a budget and the ability to tap artisan friends for some of the finish work.

When, after the set of questions needed to be accurate, I gave him the cost of the oven core I could offer him.  He told me that a high end, prestigious, company that makes oven shells, Ferrara, had the same size dome for two thousand dollars more than the price I quoted for a true brick oven.

Bellisimo!

I was glad to know that I could build custom masonry with real fire brick that was competitive with a component shipped from Italy, mass-manufactured, albeit, to high standards.

He chose the Ferrara because, as he stated, "People like to have their photo taken in front of a Ferrara."
http://www.sfallestimenti.it/english/fixed_oven.html

brick set for a Ferrara dome

Bricks fitted for a TBO dome (500 year warrantee)

I get it.  A brand-name maker's oven, built well, and covered in small tile work, has a recognizable cache.  My ovens, no two alike, appeal to the owner who wants to feel like the oven is theirs alone.

Custom TBO oven in Ventura CA

I thought about where I would put a name on my ovens (presently, they are unsigned).  In centuries past, oven builders didn't sign their ovens; they certainly didn't broadcast their name across the top of the mouth.   And I don't think my name would look as good over the mouth of an oven a the name, Ferrara.

I better understand the demands of the modern market.  I remain, the custom builder, the anachronism...

The New Pompeii

I digress...

Let's consider that we live in the new Pompeii.  Regardless of how you view the origin of climate change, or any other environmental or geo-political event, much time has passed since the volcanic event at Pompeii.

Messina Earthquake is one of the deadliest earthquakes in the western world which took the lives of nearly about 123,000 on December 28, 1908. The 7.1 magnitude earthquake jolted the city of Messina with a powerful 39 foot Tsunami destroying nearly 91% of the structures.

That city today is as vacant as the moon of it's native inhabitants.  The millions of people who visit (I as one) experience it as, what? an historic site?, a silent message?, an object lesson?

What is the Vesuvius on our near horizon?  Whether this was an existential question for Pompeiians of two thousand years ago or not, it is for us.  With knowledge of world events, we perceive mountains of looming catastrophes.

On the other hand, we are protected from the myriad of disease, crop failure, and economic fallout that Pompeiians had to deal with.  Did they feel invulnerable?  Did their metropolis seem eternal?

A book I sometimes return to because it is densely packed with thought-provoking history, is Fingerprints of the Gods, by Graham Hancock.  Hancock hypothesizes a lost civilization that existed some 12 thousand years ago (at least) and vanished except for markers left in all of the world's cultures.

The book is intricately researched yet proposes something we may intuit: that our present dominance of the Earth may be temporary; that geological, atmospheric, and astronomical events, unforeseen today may bring about drastic change to our planet.

Strangely, I find this refreshing.  I, like many, don't like to consider that we have built our own Vesuvius.  I prefer to see the natural world as more powerful than what humans are capable of.  Whether this relates to brick ovens or fresh bread, is questionable.  I do something everyday that helps, hurts, or is neutral to a balanced life.  What am I doing while Vesuvius smokes?

Help Building Brick Ovens

Rainy November Build

After Jay and crew finished it

A year and a half ago I drove a rented Dodge Grand Caravan to Charleston, West Virginia loaded with the materials for an entire 36" brick oven dome.   This followed a request by Jim and Becky Laurita for me to come to West Virginia and work with their usual masons.  We worked hard and well together.  I learned more about these 'mountain men' masons then I could have ever learned by reading (duh).  They brought me moonshine and pepperoni biscuits.  Jay took me into the 'Hollers' to see charcoal kilns his grandfather tended.


I've had the privilege to work with Latino masons in southern California, with castle-building masons in St. Charles Missouri, and I've had conversations with masons all over the world.  I've had requests for ovens in cites from New York to San Francisco.  For me it is the icing on the cake, the crust on the pizza, the sauce on the ribs.

Jim and family

Later, Jim and Becky took a bread baking workshop with my friends, Michael and Sandy Jubinsky,
who run Stone Turtle Baking and Cooking School in Maine.  They were excited to start baking.

I think these photos, which they sent me, say it all.  It shows the oven as I left it in the hands of capable masons
and the complete oven, in the hands of capable bakers (owners).

Venite a Pompeii

61 CE: Pompeii is a beautiful city.  "A paradise to live in or to see.  But believe it or not you won't think it's so hot, se non hai il 'do- ray -me'."



"VENITE A POMPEII" a local real estate broker shouts in Rome.  "There is an amphitheatre, a palaestra with a central natatorium or swimming pool and an aqueduct that provides water for more than 25 street fountains, at least four public baths, and a large number of private houses (domūs) and businesses. The amphitheater has sophisticated design, particularly in the area of crowd control." 


"Molto importante "  Crowd control.  11,000 people lived in Pompeii on the eve of its destruction, the usual mix of rich, tradesmen, and (in a separate ghetto) serving class.

"A 'bella vista' of the 'montagna di fumare' Vesuvius."

On 5 February 62,^[13] a severe earthquake did considerable damage around the bay, and particularly to Pompeii. It is believed that the earthquake would have registered between about 5 and 6 on the Richter scale.^[14]

On that day in Pompeii, there were to be two sacrifices, as it was the anniversary of Augustus being named "Father of the Nation" and also a feast day to honour the guardian spirits of the city. Chaos followed the earthquake. Fires, caused by oil lamps that had fallen during the quake, added to the panic. Nearby cities of Herculaneum and Nuceria were also affected.^[14]

Temples, houses, bridges, and roads were destroyed. It is believed that almost all buildings in the city of Pompeii were affected. 

In the days after the earthquake, ANARCHY (shades of post-apocalypse fiction) ruled the city, where theft and starvation plagued the survivors.  Crowd control fell off.  

VENI, VICI, PRESO.

Today, Pompeii on a sunny day is a lovely place to stroll through.  Not uncovered until 1599, the city's plazas and avenues feel as new as they might have been when the Romans took over the city just 160 years before its destruction.  This is just about the age of our current Los Angeles, California.  Among the favorite tourist features are the macabre plaster casts of the bodies of inhabitants in the positions of death when they were buried beneath fifteen feet of volcanic ash on August 24, 79CE,  the day the real estate bubble burst.

The Hard Truth about Brick Ovens

Mason in West Virginia assisting me on a TBO oven

Building a brick dome, the traditional shape of brick ovens for thousands of years, is hard.  In comparison, a simple brick arch, like a vault, is easy.  So why do I build these domes and why don't I build vaulted arched ovens?

Taking rectangular bricks and building a dome challenges the spacial ability of the mason.  Sometime, at the beginning of my life as a mason, I discovered that not only are traditional forms strong, but they give lasting satisfaction to the builder and the viewer.

The final reason, after the strength of domes, the aesthetic of domes, and the tradition of domes, is that domed brick ovens heat more evenly.  Vaulted arches in brick ovens is an invention of the industrial age.  The flat rear wall needed to enclose a vaulted arch is well suited to the use of alternated fuels.

Ovens with corners leave parts of the oven unevenly heated, leading to complicated product management.  I grant that if you are placing rectangular bread pans in the oven, a rectangular space will accommodate more pans... but hearth loaves (boules, baguettes, and other rounded shapes) do just fine.

My portable demonstration oven is designed after the Audrix oven shown below.

Weekly baking of bread in Audrix, France in a 2 meter diameter dome oven