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instructables
Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven
by rosemarybeetle
"Dad - can you build us a pizza oven?!"
If you've ever had a wood-oven red pizza, you know they are the best!
At a family meal last October, everyone admitted they were a bit bored of Christmas dinner. For the previous two
decades we had always had either roast dinner or baked salmon. We wanted something di erent for a change!
My daughter had a brainwave:
"Why don't we do build-your-own pizzas instead?!"
Great idea. Only one snag - we didn't have a pizza oven and this was in late October. From this, the following challenge
was laid down: "Dad - can you build us a pizza oven?!"
Obviously the answer was yes - I would just have to work out how later how to build a pizza oven from scratch in about 6
weeks. No pressure then.
And so, here it is - how I built a pizza oven that works (really well, it turned out).
What's in this instructable
Research ndings
research done in advance for the design process
a summary of my ndings about oven concepts
di erent approaches to constructing pizza ovens
handy tips from experience of how I built our pizza oven
Construction details
woodstack base
reinforced plinth
internal parabolic chamber using a single monocoque concrete shell
full details of insulation layers of the dome.
chimney and oven opening arch
reproof door
Importance of good insulation

I recommend a special focus on the thick insulation used
this makes it extremely e cient for high-heat pizza cooking
Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 1
it also means it retains heat for low-and-slow overnight cooking
It uses a surprisingly small amount of wood for the re
Fire control
details of how the re can be managed to cook very hot or low and smoky
basic example of how the oven temperature decays over many hours
using thermometers to help manage cooking
Examples of food cooked in it:

Obviously pizza!
High-heat roasting - such as meat joints, Tandoori chicken, chips
Baking - bread, pies
Slow-cooking and smoking - low-and-slow overnight cooking for brisket and pulled pork and getting
meat joints rich and smoky
Supplies:
NB - costs are in UK pounds approximate as of June 2023. I don't have all receipts. For any free items, this will be because I
have used reclaimed materials, picked up when other people have discarded or donated them. I always try to reuse
things. This is generally a good thing and obviously saves money. The main costs were for specialist and generally not
very cheap reproof materials that you have to buy - like Ciment Fondu, ceramic wool and Pearlite (although you may be
able to get the latter cheap from garden wholesalers) . You might also be able to use old re blankets or reproof
mineral- bre roof insulation, but be very careful they are safe and not old asbestos etc. I haven't included costs for
small things like screws that I used to hold the concrete mould together etc.
Materials - physical build
Reclaimed red clay bricks - used for the wood stack walls (about 220 - free - reclaimed)
Ciment Fondu - very high strength heat-resistant cement used in furnaces. This is important. you
shouldn't use normal portland cement (which can break down at the higher heat of a well insulated wood
oven) (2 bags for £97.80)
Fast setting cement - high strength and speeds up build for non heat-facing concrete (3 bags for £60)
Pearlite - an aerated mineral grain used as insulating ballast in the dome concrete (100 litre bag for
£27.99)
Ceramic wool - extremely good mineral (glass) insulation, the main insulation in the oven dome (5
metres 50mm thick for about £160)
Gravel (stone aggregates/chippings) - used in base concrete (3 or four bags - about £12)
Sharp sand - standard binder for creating a good strong concrete mix (2 bags about £7)
Builders sand (soft sand) - standard binder for brick mortar (5 bags about £15)
Fire bricks - for the oven oor (free - reclaimed)
Steel rods - for reinforcing concrete (6 metres of 10mm about £20)
Steel chimney ue for the chimney (free - reclaimed)
Reclaimed vented cowling/cap - chimney cover adjustable as smoke controller when slow cooking (free -
reclaimed)
Ceramic tiles, broken - used to create the lovely crazed re ective black nish of the dome (free -
reclaimed)
Reclaimed red terracotta roof tiles (broken) - used for paving the standing area and surround (free -
reclaimed)

Materials - mould making
Drawing materials - used to draft the parabolic template
Plywood - for the internal parabolic mould (free - reclaimed)
Hardboard - for covering the plywood of the parabolic mould (free - reclaimed)
Acrylic sheet - for heat-shaping a bespoke mould for connecting chimney to dome (free - reclaimed)
Aluminium coated foam board - for the oven oor retaining mould (free - reclaimed)
Duct tape - for holding modular mould sections together temporarily (maybe a roll - about £4)
Materials - oven door

Plywood - for the exterior door (free - reclaimed)
Waste elm block - used for door handle (free - reclaimed)
Steel sheet - beaten to make the cover for inner heat shield to protect outer wooden door (free -
reclaimed)
Ceramic wool - insulation used inside steel heat shield cover (leftovers from above)
Tools
This build didn't need a huge number of tools. It was mostly building tools for cementing and so on.
Spade - for mixing concrete. I used a small one, because it is less e ort to mix
Float trowel - the big at rectangular one - used to smooth the dome exterior rendering
Pointing trowels - for mortar work mainly on the brick arch
Circular saw - for general cutting of wood
Jigsaw - for cutting wood when making moulds
Angle grinder - for cutting steel bars
Metal snips - for cutting steel mesh
Large serrated knife - for cutting insulation (e.g. breadknife)
Impact driver - for screwing together shuttering timber for containing concrete
Hammer for breaking tiles etc
Spirit level - for checking concrete mould edges are level etc

Step 1: Designing the Oven and Researching
Above - cutaway side view of oven design structure.

To get a good design involved doing a fair bit of (re)searching online. There is no point trying to start from scratch when
there is a load of stu on YouTube (and Instructables!) from other people explaining how they had managed it.
I found a load of really useful info, with some di erent approaches. One thing I discovered is that there are a fair number
of people saying: our ovens are great/I know all about this (probably), etc. You should be critical about these claims - on
close reading, some are less convincing than others. Also, you sometimes need to vary your search terms because search
ranking can repeatedly highlight already popular, but average content.
Roughly the stu I found also fell into a few categories of online content providers...
hobbyists - generally very generous and willing to share their mistakes - Instructables and YouTube both
had plenty of good ones. Cheers people - here is my e ort.
marketorial - videos purporting to show how it is done, but really mainly focussed on selling stu , brand
building and occasionally people just bigging themselves up. To be fair, some of these do actually have
useful facts and tips amongst the hype
traditional makers - I didn't nd a huge amount of content about exactly how historically pizza ovens
were constructed - people in the two categories of content providers above asserted that things like: "
traditionally, ovens were made like this...", but there was little evidence to suggest they had ever
researched it properly. Most felt like they had read someone else's hobbyists site and assumed that was
true.
engineering content - I did nd some good information in industry building construction content, on
the di erences between types of cement and ballasts for making di erent types of concrete. These could
get very technical with chemical composition or crumbling and hardness testing results for di erent
concrete. Useful when trying to verify some claims on hobbyist sites, although quite hard-going to read.
Research ndings
The general consensus was:

a parabolic oven shape is the most e cient to focus heat from the top of the oven evenly down onto the
cooking area. Same principle as car headlights and parabolic re ector heaters.
BUT parabolas are not essential - actually semi-spherical and barrel shapes are traditionally used and work
ne, so it probably doesn't matter that much, apart from improving heat distribution for more even
cooking. It felt like your cooking technique (e.g. judging when crusts were getting close to burning and
rotating them) might make a more signi cant di erence to good cooking than the exact shape
the cooking chamber needs to be heat-proof (duh!), but it was not that obvious in advance, which
common building materials are actually heat-proof (e.g. basic cement-based concrete can break down if
the oven temperature goes above a certain level), so take care looking at your choice of cement in
particular
for structures facing direct heat inside the oven you should use re bricks, specialist refractory concrete
and/or clay that mineralises and get more stable on heat
It is very important to create good insulation between internal oven space and the outside. This makes
your oven much more e cient by keeping in heat for ages. It also means the top of your oven doesn't get
too hot to touch
You also need good insulation between oven oor and supporting platform
you can choose to layer pre-cooked bricks to build up the dome, or go for a single monocoque concrete
layer with moulded concrete. I chose the latter.
You need specialist cement for making concrete inside the chamber. Ordinary Portland cement is not
recommended as it can break down. I used Ciment Fondu. If you like to know why, then Ciment Fondu is
a type of calcium aluminate cement - see this Wikipedia page for more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_aluminate_cements
Design approach - structural
After comparing and contrasting a load of how-tos, I chose to

build a parabolic dome (or as close as I could get it, without overworrying about it being a pure parabola)
to do this with a single monocoque moulded-concrete shell layer, rather than build it up using bricks,
because this makes it much easier to get a bespoke shape
to reinforce concrete with steel for tensile reinforcement as required. I used steel rods in the base it was
supported on, and steel fencing grid-mesh and chicken wire in the parabolic dome.
to use a plywood and hardboard multi-part mould as the former for the main dome (so it could be
removed in parts)
to use acryclic sheet and tape for moulding the tricky chimney-throat area
to use ceramic wool for the insulation
to use Ciment Fondu for the internal concrete exposed to direct oven heat
To use Pearlite as aggregate in the Ciment Fondu in the oven walls to give additional insulation
To create a base that also serves as a wood-stack base upon which to build the oven. I built this from
ordinary bricks with gaps in the side walls to allow air ow through, so that scavenged and foraged wood
I nd can be seasoned naturally. This is very e ective. I mainly saw up old pallets for quick res and small
logs from tree branches for better avours when slow cooking and smoking etc. They all dry out quickly in
the wood stack.
Design approach - aesthetic
A pizza oven is quite an imposing structure, so we wanted it to look good

the garden has a lot of red brick paving edges, so I used red bricks, and brick-red terracotta tiles, to blend
in with the existing look
The main dome was glazed using a small-sized crazed tiling
We chose black because we like it. It also blends in nicely with the black steel chimney and door. You
naturally get black smoke marks on the door opening of a wood oven where smoke comes out, so that
blends in too.
For the surround to the oven and the small tiled standing area, I blended colour and pattens with other
features for a harmonised look
I blended the COLOUR of the red terracotta tiles with the bricks of the woodstack stand and the arched
oven entrance
I blended the crazed PATTERN of the horizontal oor and stand tiling with the crazed pattern of the dome
The end result was a very pleasing overall look.
The good insulation also means the outside of the oven does not get hot so that plants that grow round
the oven are not damaged by heat, and the greenery adds to the overall e ect.

Step 2: Laying a Solid Base Support
Obviously, for a heavily-built construction you need a decent foundation. For this I created a support slab of concrete.
On all the front-facing sides, I built a low wall bricks to contain the slab for a nice look. At the back, I just made shuttering
with boards without wasting any bricks that wouldn't be seen.
This was a standard 4:2:1 mix of 4x aggregate(25mm gravel): 2x sharp sand: 1x basic portland cement.
It's about 6 inches thick (150mm). I didn't bother using any steel reinforcement as the only real load on it would be
compression from the weight of the rest of the build. There is no signi cant tensile load on it and it also has solid earth
under it, with broken bricks as a base layer on the soil.
The concrete slab was levelled by sliding with a baulk of timber in a see-sawing motion. I also used this to bash the
concrete mix so the bubbles got released and the top layer was a pool of cementy slurry which gives a good smooth,
even surface when set.
This was standard portland cement. This was ne as this layer would not get exposed to any heat. This takes a good two
or three days before you want to build anything else on it, so it can stabilise and set properly (full strength is not actually
for about 28 days!)

Step 3: Building a Support With Built-in Woodstack
This base acts as a support, as well as creating a sheltered woodstore to accumulate wood. The side and back walls have
aerated courses, with holes in between bricks to allow good air ow which dries the wood out, for clean burning.
Once the slab was set su cient to build upon (usually OK after 2-3 days. I left it one week), I built a pedestal base to
mount the oven on.
Before building it, I laid out the bricks to check the best way to bond them. NOTE - the holes in the back are deliberate to
allow air to circulate inside the wood store. This is the best way to season wood - allowing air to blow through and carry
o moisture.
In the photo of the brick wall being laid, I have laid the rst three courses with mortar. The higher courses are not yet laid.
This was just me setting them out to check where best to position the bricks.
You'll note the walls straddle the concrete base and the side bricks of the base container wall. This was to help bond
these side bricks into the overall structure, and stop them tending to come loose.
The mortar for this was a standard 4:1 mix of 4 parts builder's sand with 1 part standard portland cement. To make it easy
to lay, I used a good amount of washing up liquid as a plasticiser. This helps it all stick together and makes the mortar
easy to work with.

Once I had a good pedestal of bricks, I constructed a big old support slab to sit on top of the base walls, which would
form the main support for what would be a pretty heavy oven.
The rst thing was to build a mould (aka a "former") to contain the slab. This was created from vertical supporting brace
frames both inside and external to the brick walls, using 50mm x 50mm timber.
I screwed horizontal base plates of plywood on to these frames, to form the mould base.
On the sides of these, I then screwed on outer containing walls, at right angles to these base pieces, to complete the
mould.
As you can see, this wooden mould was made from any old wood I could nd. The horizontal oor pieces generally
needed to be thicker to bear the heavy weight of the concrete. The vertical outer containing walls were lighter, as these
do not need to bear direct gravitational weight. They are just there to stop the sloppy concrete pouring o the edges and
to create a nice clean square edge.
The gaps between wood and brick were padded with old newspaper, to prevent the concrete leaking out. The minimum
mould depth for the slab is a little over 2 inches thick (55-60mm) although it varies across the whole piece.
Once the mould was nished I would ll it with concrete.
And given that the main oven would be pretty heavy, I used 8mm and 10mm steel reinforcement rods to add tensile
strength to the slab. Essentially these mean the slab won't snap under heavy load...
Once the mould was sound, I mixed a concrete using high-strength/fast-setting cement to ll it all in.
This is also a 4:2:1 mix of aggregate (25mm gravel): sharp sand: high strength cement (Blue circle rapid setting cement)
I made this quite wet, so the top layer would ow well and bubbles would rise out easily. This was helped by using a
length of timber across the frame, to level it out. By tapping the wood, you can also agitate the bubbles so they pop out
of the concrete. This is the same as I had done in the base.

Step 4: Drafting the Template for the Parabolic Dome
My design choice was to make the inside of the dome a parabola. The maths makes sense, because in the oven hot gas
gathers at the top of the oven and radiates heat out in all directions. Wherever this radiated heat hits the parabola, it is
alway re ected more-or-less vertically downwards. This means heat is much more evenly radiated downwards.
So parabolas are great, but they are also a bit ddly to draw.
I didn't take very good pictures of how I created the parabola, but it uses a builders square and a nail to draw a constant
line between focus and reference line. This involves marking out a series of point that are equidistant from the nail (left of
pic) that represents the focus, to the wooden bar that represents the directrix ( xed reference line).
Essentially you use a xen baton of wood as a guide rail, then move the corner of the square along the rail in small step
and as it is restricted by the square, it creates a set of lines that then create a parabola.
BUT the best way to understand this is to watch it being done. This is what I did - I got this from this great YouTube video -
respect to this person
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVbfLlSLrZA
Sounds hard. It isn't. Watch the video :)
Satisfyingly, it is basically using the same method that small children used to use to make pin and string drawings in the
1970s, when you made your own fun from anything you could get your hands on.
Step 5: Using the 2-dimensional Template to Make a 3-dimensional Dome Mould Former
I drew the parabola on a white hardboard sheet (actually the backing from an IKEA cupboard). This is about 4mm thick
and is like a piece of very strong cardboard. It is ideal to use as a template because the big edge means running the pen
round it is easy and doesn't slip.
I then cut this out with a Stanley knife (folding craft knife) and used it as a template to cut plywood parabolic buttresses,
to support the mould.
I used some small sheets of plywood that I'd scrounged out of a skip. With some forethought, I found I could cut two of
these from each sheet of plywood. Waste not, want not.
I used a jigsaw to cut out eight of these. Then used ga er tape to joint them together to check the parabolic shape
looked OK.
This looks like a great mould, but actually it is not practical to use like this, because it is an internal mould and once
concreted over, you'd struggle to remove it.
Later on, I had to deconstruct it and build into removable modular sections, that would keep the overall parabolic dome
shape, but that could be removed through the narrow mouth of the oven.

Step 6: Working Out the Floor Plan for Dome and Door Arch
I had decided to make the oor of the oven from rebricks. These are speci cally designed to hold heat and being at,
you can make a oor with them by e ectively paving it in any pattern you want.
I chose to arrange them in a herring bone pattern to allow the pizza shovel to slide in easily.
To make the oor I needed to cut out a load of bricks that matched the dome I would build over them later.
To do this involved
laying out bricks in the pattern I wanted
placing the dome arch mould former on them
adding bricks at the front to represent the oven entrance arch
drawing round the mould and bricks with charcoal
numbering all the bricks (important it's hard to work out which one goes where, later, otherwise!)
cutting the bricks to match.
Cutting bricks is ddly

To cut the bricks, I used a diamond edged tile cutting blade in an angle grinder. It is a bit ddly doing this as the outer
edges needed to be rounded. You need to make a seried of cuts to get a polygonal edge, then use the grinder blade
manually to smooth o the corners

Step 7: Adding a Fireproof Insulated Oven Floor
Once I had cut all the re bricks for the base, I transferred them to the slab.
I lost a few photos in this step, unfortunately. (what they involved is shown in bold below)
This is what I actually did
Not shown, but very important - rst of all I laid them on top of a 25 mm layer of ceramic bre
insulation (important to protect the slab concrete underneath from getting hot and decomposing
Laid a tight steel mesh reinforcement on top of it (galvanised square fence mesh)
Left the mesh long, so it could be linked up to the dome later, for reinforcement strength.
Created a 4" perimeter mould round the outside. This is essential to de ne the shape and then con ne the
wet concrete before it set.
The mould the same rough shape as the bricks and was made from aluminium strip so it could be bent to
shape easily, but remain strong enough to contain concrete. (see image above)
It was about 1" wider than the bricks
Applied a 2" layer of the Ciment Fondu/Pearlite insulating concrete to bed it down.
Laid the bricks out on top of the concrete as tightly as possible (using a rubber mallet to tap them
together)
Filled in round the bricks in the mould to create a retaining edge
Made sure the extra mesh was sitting up, so it could be bonded into the concrete dome later for strength

Step 8: Constructing the Main Oven Chamber Over the Dome Mould
Of all the stages in building the oven, exactly how I'd do this using a mould was de nitely the one that I had been least
certain about how to approach.
Im my research, almost all the pizza ovens were usually built using special re bricks, built up into a hemisphere (easiest
way to do) or occasionally into a parabolic shape (better heat distribution, but not easy to build using bricks).
My design was to build a single self-supporting concrete monocoque shell over the mould. Using a mould is by far the
easiest way to get a speci c shape. In my case I want a (near-enough) parabola. Would it have mattered if I'd just used a
half-sphere? Honestly, probably not. Let's face it, if you have a 400C-500C oven, it's gonna cook stu OK, no matter the
shape, more or less, I reckon.
BUT, I knew that a parabola will give the most even radiation of heat from the top of the oven chamber down onto the
oven oor where cooking happens, so I really wanted to make the chamber a parabolic dome. Basically, the parabola
shape makes heat come down more evenly, like an overhead grill (in the UK "grill" means a gas or electric heater ABOVE
food - in the US it's called an overhead broiler I think).
The mould needs to be removable
The diagram shows how I made the mould into modular parts for removal. The top half is essentially the cap of the
wooden buttress frame shown above, cut o from the rest of the buttresses. The cap was also now split into two halves.

Each is a set of buttress pieces with hardboard panels to ll in the gaps between them. The panels were screwed onto the
buttresses, then reinforced using good old ga er tape (duct tape). These are resting on more hardboard panels, all of
which are taped together using more ga er tape.
Once I had my modular parts, I recreated the original dome shape by connected them all back together using the ga er
tape. This was crude, but crude works. Using tape to hold the pieces togethermeant each part could be separated and
removed in turn later, by simply cutting the tape
The photos also show the oven entrance bricks laid temporarily in place with the steel arch former. This hole is the size
that each piece needed to t through when being removed.
I'd also added a lip to the front of the dome to prevent the concrete slopping o the mould. This shot shows the rst
structural layer of the dome concrete. The wood poking out of the dome mouth is supporting the mould, but in a way
that can be removed later, when set.
Also clearly visible is some of the 15mm square steel mesh, used to add tensile strength to the concrete. Some of this
mesh is from the base and some was added as I built up the dome concrete layer.
You need to use special heat-resistant concrete
It is critical that you DON'T use normal cement for the concrete. I used a 1:4 mix of Ciment Fondu (the super strong, heat-
resistant cement mentioned earlier) to Pearlite.
Pearlite is a type of volcanic glass mineral that occurs naturally. It looks like u y white beads, much like polystyrene
beads, but being glass it can tolerate very hight temperatures. It is an extremely good insulator partly because glass is a
poor conductor of heat, but also because it is full of holes that trap air.
The concrete is sort of equivalent to making chocolate rice krispie cakes. The Ciment Fondu is the chocolate glue and the
Pearlitre is the lightweight padding. Despite being quite lumpy, it is quite easy to trowel on and spread out.
Built up using two layers
This rst layer of Ciment Fondu/Pearlite was about 35-45 mm thick (about 1.5" or just over). This was not really thick
enough, even with the steel reinforcement mesh, so once the rst layer was set hard, I added another layer over it to get
the thickness up to a good solid 60-70mm (roughly 2.5" thick or just over).
Removing the dome mould
I don't have any good pictures of this, unfortunately. I have drawn out the way it works in the diagram. The mould is in
three parts and they are made from the plywood dome arches, covered with hardboard panels, held together strongly,
but removably with ga er (duct) tape.
After the concrete was set hard (I left it several days), I carefully removed the mould. This required cutting the tape of the
mould pieces and slowly easing out each of the lower pieces, one at a time. Once the bottom halves of the mould were
out, the top mini-dome could be dropped down and then cut apart, so it could be removed through the front arch, too.
Note - when setting the concrete sticks to the tape a bit and some tape was left on the inner conrecte face. You need to
remove it from the inside of the dome. It comes o quite easily as long as you don't leave the concrete to set for weeks.

Step 9: Incorporating the Chimney Flue and Building the Arched Opening
Once the main oven chamber dome dome was constructed and fully set, I moved onto building the the brick arch for the
oven mouth
Building the brick arch for the oven mouth
For this, I used a custom steel arch support. I made this from an old steel shelf (about 2mm thick), by bending and
shaping on the anvil. This steel arch was used a former, upon which to support the bricks when building the arch, before
the mortar set.
This steel arch support also acted as a base upon which to mount and support the chimney pipe at the rear of the brick
arch. You can't see it here, but the central span of the steel arch has a semi-circular hole in the rear-facing face. This is to
allow a ue hole to be formed at the mouth of the chimney. The chimney pipe has a diagonal cut across about 2/3 of its
rear-facing lower end which forms the other half of the ue opening already half-formed formed by the section cut into
the arch support.
The pictures show the build after I'd built the arch and added about half the extra layer of the top of the dome. The steel
mesh is showing on the near side, where that layer had not yet been fully applied.
The oven mouth gets hot so I also used the reproof Ciment Fondu for the bricklaying mortar with a 4:1 mix of builder's
sand to cement .
Incorporating the chimney pipe between dome and arch
Once the arch was built, the chimney ue hole was just higher than the mouth of the oven, so hot smoke and fumes
created by the re would reach the chimney opening inside the oven and naturally ow out of the chimney and not out
of the mouth of the oven.
Also, not easily seen, is the moulding piece, between the rst layer of the dome and the steel plate. This is a piece of
acrylic sheet moulded by softening with a blowtorch to ll in the gap between concrete, chimney pipe and steel
arch. The acrylic is about 4mm thick and again is held in place using removable tape - in this case masking tape.
The mix where I lled in the gap between dome and the arch of the oven mouth was the same as the rest of the dome - a
4:1 Pearlite to Ciment Fondu mix. This was quite ddly, but once all the moulding was secured, I could build up the side
walls and then ll in the gaps. The total thickness of this inner dome varies, but it is at least 60mm - 70mm thick (about
2.5") over the main dome and in most places a bit more. It is even thicker in the areas where brick joins dome/chimey and
also at the base.
Removing the archway mould
This shot from the front shows the wooden internal support that props up the acrylic part of the mould, before the
concrete had set. It was removed later. The acrylic is actually screwed onto a plank inside the oven with further planks to
bear the weight.
This shot showing the oven mouth was taken about two days later, when the mould and its supports have been
removed. By this time, I had also applied another layer of the insulating concrete to form a cleaner, more even shape.

Step 10: Adding Really Good Insulation
Do not miss o this step!
The insulation of your oven is really important. This is what makes it so e ective. It means you need much less wood to
fuel it and once hot, it stays hot for ages. You don't want to have to be adding more wood mid-cook of a pizza party
because your oven has cooled down too fast.
In the photos, you can see how good this is when I was cooking on a cold morning. The outside of the oven still has ice
on it from the morning frost, but the inside of the oven dome at the top directly under this area was nearly 460C after the
oven had been red up for 20 minutes or more.
Use ceramic bre
Although Pearlite is a good insulator, it is set in concrete, which itself is only a so-so insulator. So, although it is a much
better insulator than standard concrete, you still need more insulation. For this I added ceramic wool. This is a ceramic
bre spun out to form a blanket. This is an extremely good insulator. Don't scrimp. It should be at least 2" thick (50mm).
I believe ceramic wool is about 5 times more e ective at insulating than the Pearlite concrete. This means to make it as
e ective using concrete would mean building your concrete dome an extra 250mm (10") thick!
To add the ceramic wool, I just just laid it over the internal chamber dome and then cut it to shape, adding ller pieces as
needed and packing them all nice and tight to avoid any gaps. I have a 14" ham slice knife I used for this, but it is easy to
cut. You could use a breadknife.
Estimating how much insulation you need to buy
Someone asked how much ceramic wool you need to cover the dome in the middle layer. I bought ve metres and used
between four and four-and-a-half metres. This was not a lucky guess. Surprisingly I could still remember the formula for
the surface area of a sphere from maths many years ago. You can just Google it, but anyway, it is this:
Surface area of a sphere = 4π r2 (4π x radius squared)
BUT of course you are not trying to cover a sphere, only half a sphere, so...
Surface area of half a sphere = 2π r2 (2π x radius squared)
The dome you need to cover is the concrete inner dome - the rst layer of concrete over the mould. It is not exactly a
sphere obviously, but it is close enough to do your quantity-surveying estimation!
My dome varied in thickness because the inner cavity is a parabolic dome and the outer surface is closer to a hemisphere.
It is thick at the bottom. I used a value of 3.142 for π.
Roughly the dome had a radius (half the width of the dome base) of between about 800mm and 900mm. In metres, this
is between 0.8 and 0.9 metres.
So with the radius in metres the calulation showed me I needed between four and ve square metres of ceramic wool
Lower end of range = 2π r2 = 2 x 0.8 x 0.8 x 3.142 = 4.02176 metres squared
Upper end of range = 2π r2 = 2 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 3.142 = 5.0868 metres squared
Health and Safety
Ceramic wool contains lots of tiny bres. These are not loose when you get it out of the packaging, but they get released
when you cut it -
USE A MASK. You do not want to breath these in
USE EYE PROTECTION - you also don't want them in your eyes
Once I had a good gapless blanket over the dome, I stretched a tight mesh of chicken wire over it. This does two things. It
holds it in place and also acts as a key and steel reinforcement for the rst layer of concrete rendering that I laid over the
ceramic wool. When you apply the rendering, it weighs down through the mesh and once set, makes the outer dome
much stronger, by adding tensile strength.
As with the internal dome, this outer dome was applied in several layers. Each one was about 20mm thick and as I built
each one, I smoothed the mortar render to a ner and ner dome shape.
The mortar used for rendering did not need to be Ciment Fondu as it doesn't get unduly hot, because it is over the
insulation layer.
For the mortar, I used a 4:1 mix of builder's sand to high-strength cement.
Each layer was smoothed out to an even contoured shape to create the pleasing almost hemispheric nal shape. This was
done by layering on the mortar render, then using a wetted trowel to smooth it out to a lovely even curve, so it could be
tiled.

Step 11: Applying the Black Crazed Tiling
The crazed tiling was done using cheapish bathroom/kitchen tiles from a local DIY shop. These were called Cosmopolitan
Black, no less! Obviously you can't tile a curved dome with at tiles, so I then broken them up with a hammer. Each piece
has about a 1"-2" edge. When breaking them, I hit the back of the tile, to avoid damaging the glazed nish.
You should always wear eye protection when doing this. Tiny little shards of glassy tile y o which you don't want in
your eyes.
To x the tiles, I mixed a 5-1 cement-builder's sand mortar mix and made it pretty runny. I used fast setting cement. This
makes it easy to manage, because the tiles grip and stay gripped more quickly. Because it sets so fast, you shouldn't mix
too much at a time. A couple of buckets's worth is plenty for each mix.
Using thin rubber gloves, I applied the mortar using my ngers to slop a blob of mortar onto the dome shell, then push
the tiling pieces into it. To t the pieces nicely, this was quite time-consuming. The whole dome took about 3-4 hours to
tile.
It's worth cleaning o the excess mortar and any odd stray blobs as you go - they dry before you know it. Also, if you let
the mortar dry too much before you wipe the excess o , it is harder to do and you risk having to scrub it a bit, which can
scratch your tile glaze.
You will note a bit of crystal blooming on some the drying tiles. This is caused by using quite a wet mix. It is calcium salts
in the water seeping out. These salts are left behind as a residue when it dries. This wipes o easily enough.

Step 12: Adding a Reclaimed Chimney Cowling
A simple way to control your re
I got lucky with this this cowling. I found it in a skip (dumpster). I just needed to clean it up and then I painted it with
black heatproof paint to match the chimney.
The original use of the cowling would be to provide protection from rain on a gas boiler outlet. I use the cowling as a
choke on the chimney. Depending on how closed it is, it controls the ow of smoke gases out. By combining this with
variations in how open the oven door is, you get a good basic range of control of air ow and therefore re control.
It is also still handy to leave on the chimney when the oven is not in use, to stop rain getting in
When starting the re, I take it right o and the smoke rises fast and this draws air into the oven fast so
the re roars into life easily
When roasting and baking, I rest the cowling on the chimney at an angle and it lets smoke out but not so
fast it cools the oven down too much. It reaches an equilibrium between heat from the re making the
oven hotter and smoke releasing cooling it down. I use the door thermometer to see how this is working
There are two diagonal angles it rests at. One lets out slightly more ow than the other.
When slow cooking overnight or smoking, I put the cowling on completely, so the air to the re becomes
restricted. A re can smoulder away for up to 10 hours if you do this. It is nice and low for slow-cooking
and it is generally quite smoky, so everything tastes great
Alternatives for smoke control
Quite a few ovens you will see when researching will have a permanent cowling, mainly as a rain protector. If you use a
xed cowling, you will need another way to control the smoke ow. I had initially considered building a choke valve into
the chimney. This is a common mechanism you will see in designs. It involves a circular plate inside the chimney,
mounted on a rod that can be turned from outside the chimney. By opening and closing the valve, you control the ow.
It is probably a bit ddly to make and t one of these, but not impossible. I didn't bother because the cowling method
works so well. You could also just use a tile resting on the chimney top. By adjusting the gap with the tile, you'd have
another easy method. I like the cowling, because it looks smart.

Step 13: Laying the Crazed Terracotta Standing Area and Oven Surround
When you use your oven, you stand around in front of it a lot, so it makes sense to have a good solid area for this. I
wanted to make this look good, so I laid a simple paved area. I laid out a curved perimiter of bricks directly onto the
earth. They were dug in so the top face of the bricks was ush at ground level. I also added some broken bricks and other
hardcore as a base leaving the level about 3" lower than the upper brick edge.
I then laid a layer of high-strength concrete over it, leaving it su ciently lower than the upper brick face, that I could tile
over it later and the tiles would be ush with the upper brick face.
The tiles here are terracotta roo ng tiles. I reclaimed these from a skip (dumpster). I didn't even need to break them up as
they were already broken up by the roofers who had thrown them o a roof when stripping them.
I used the same tiles on the edge surrounding the oven dome. I like the informality of these. They have a rustic charm.

Step 14: Making a Fireproof Oven Door
The oven chamber can get very hot, so obviously, you need a reproof door. Initially I had used a plywood only door on
the rst few cooks because I didn't have time to make a proper one. The oven quickly burnt a hole in that after about
three or four cooking sessions!
My door is not hinged. My approach to was to create a kind of insulation plug with a handle on. This allows the door to be
take right out when cooking with the door open, so it doesn't get in the way (and it can be hot so you don't want to
touch the exposed inside of a hinged oven door).
The recess at the front of the arch opening of the oven means you can open the door slightly by standing it diagonally to
leave about a 25mm (1") gap down one side. This is used as part of the air ow control. When roasting or baking, with the
door open a little, the re will burn quite a bit hotter, because air can get in easily. You can control this by closing it a bit
more.
I had thought of making a nice heavy solid metal door, but metal conducts and loses heat quickly. It is also very heavy.
With a loose door that is not hinged, picking it up and moving it is something you want to do quickly, easily and safely, so
I decided against it and used a lighter composite plywood and steel sheet door with insulation inside.
The door is made of a plywood outer board with a metal cap attached to the inside. I covers a generous layer of the same
ceramic wool that is inside the oven chamber dome. This allows the oven door to be plugged shut with con dence that it
is not leaking heat and that the outside will not get hot and burn you.
I made the metal cap from a 2mm metal shelf from a garage shelving system. This was shaped to t the size of the inner
steel arch opening of the oven entrance like a plug. This sheet had an angled edge that I could use as a containing edge
on two sides. I used an angle grinder to cut the curved shape for the top edge that ts into the doorway arch. To add a lip
to this curved side required making lots of little cuts on the edge. These were cut to the depth of the lip on the other side.
I then just folded each one over right round the curved edge. You can see this in the photos.
The outer face plate of the door is made from two pieces of plywood. These are bigger than the shape of the metal cap.
They were cut to t the recess between the inner steel arch and the outer brick arch. The insulation was laid on top of this
plate this and then the cap was positioned over it and attached to the back of it using 4 screws.
A door needs a handle. I added a simple hood grab handle for picking it up. I carved this from a piece of elm reclaimed
from a dead tree in my garden a few years ago. This is attached with screws on the inside of the outer plywood panel of
the door. The screws are protected by the insulation, so they don't get hot and loose.
Once made, I painted the door with black heat-proof paint for wood burners, to match the rest of the look.
Finally, I tted a barbecue thermometer. This has a dial on the outside and a probe that pokes through a hole in the door

Step 15: Reflections on the Build
This is not di cult, but is quite a big task
This is not a build to take on lightly, but an especially satisfying one. The method of using a removable mould is very
e ective and means you can make any shape you want. My mould was quite crude, but it worked reall well. If you are
generally handy and are up for a challenge, building a pizza oven is a great project. I built this on weekends and this took
me about 3 months overall to nish. If you worked on it continuously, it would probably still need at least 2-3 weeks.
There is a lot of concreting which needs one course to set before starting the next.
I was slightly apprehensive that I would spend ages building it and then it wouldn't work. Happily, it not only works, but
works really well. It is incredibly easy to cook fantastic pizzas, and a whole load more by using it as just a wood- red
oven.
Some thoughts...
Good insulation is essential!
Don't scrimp on this and don't rely on the concrete alone to provide insulation - use ceramic wool
the oven is incredibly e cient
a re based on a pile of waste wood of about 16" across will heat it up to the very high heat you need for
pizza and then because of the excellent insulation, it keeps its heat really well for other cooking methods
The oven roof can easily get as hot as 500C (and hotter - my thermometer can't measure above 550C)
This will grill and char-roast things really nicely.
Tandoori chicken and marinated wings cook fast without steaming and taste great
The oven oor can get to 300C+ so your pizzas will cook fast from above and below with crispy bases.
it also will stay hot for hours, so it is great for slow-cooking - pop a marinated pork butt or brisket joint in it
and close the door at about 140-150C and let it cool down overnight for 8-10 hours and the meat falls

apart
I have also baked bread and potatoes in the the residual heat
Use the right concrete and aggregates
You must use heat-proof cement or your oven will break down over time when it gets very hot
Ciment Fondu - look it up. It is not cheap, but it is the one you want. It might be called other names in the
US. It is used for furnaces
Pearlite - insulating beads of glassy volcanic material
Fast setting cement - this is useful for non-heat-critical work as it sped up the process a lot. You only need
to wait about 2-4 hours between layers, instead of 1-2 days
You are not alone
I did this and so take what ideas you want and ignore the rest, but don't just take what I did - also check out everyone
else's experience. That is what i did rst.
Instructables obviously - some good ones on here
YouTube - quite a few companies that sell oven kits have useful videos
Google it - you'll have other questions I haven't answered and someone, somewhere has tried it, got
irritated by it, solved it and posted it!
watch a few videos of how other people have done it, then choose a method.
I like to use reclaimed materials, because it is good to give things new life, and also because it is much
cheaper. People who are throwing away bricks etc., will usually be happy for you to take them, so they
get re-used and also because it can cost money to dispose of them as hardcore
Step 16: Cooking in a Wood Fired Oven 1 - Fire Control
The picture above is a rather slapdash chart of the cooling over time of one session using the oven. Cooking over many
hours needs only a pretty small pile of wood. This comes from the attention taken to insulation. This chart shows a
session started from a moderately high heat. The starting heat can be as high as 250C.
NB - temperatures here are taken from the door-mounted thermometer. It measures heat from a probe as far away as it is
possible to get from the re itself. It is also mounted at about 130mm (5") from the base of the oven.
These door-mounted thermometer readings should be treated as a guide. The heat in the oven can be quite a bit higher,
further inside and higher up in the dome which radiates down onto the oven oor, but not the door. As you start to cook
in your individual oven, you will need to get used to these readings and intepret what the readings mean for cooking
things further inside the oven.
Cooking in a closed wood- red oven
Fire control of the oven is managed by two factors

How much wood fuel you add
How you control the ow of air to the burning wood and burning gases coming from the re
Managing the ow of gases (air and fumes) is the one to get you head round. For cooking Pizza, you need a reasonably
generous amount of wood and a good ow of air to it, so it burns clean and hot.
To control air, you have the oven door. When you are starting the re, you want the door o so the oven entrance is fully
open and lots of air gets sucked in. You also want the chimney fully open, so smoke and hot gases can escape fast.
Between the two, this will get a re raging pretty quickly.
After that, you can choose to open and close the door and chimney opening in various combinations:
For high-heat quick cooking - e.g. pizza, at breads, searing steaks etc - leave both door and chimney
open to keep the re blazing
For roasting leave the chimney open, with the door almost closed, except for a small gap so a bit of air
comes in
For baking, you generally need the oven door closed, but with the chimney slightly restricted
For smoking, you need to get the re burning well rst, then close the door and the chimney, to starve
the oven of all but a tiny bit of air, so the wood smoulders and burns with a lot of smoke
A well-insulated oven can get very hot
First thing to note -

Wood- red ovens can get way hotter than a domestic oven (more than 500C)
Pros - super fast cooking of pizzas and pittas, naans etc
Cons - if you don't pay attention to the top down radiated heat, you will burn the outside of things before
the inside is cooked
After the initial intense heat that is good for pizzas and roasting potatoes, the oven stays hot for hours, so you can slow
bake other things like bread in the leftover heat.
A small amount of wood can cook lots of di erent things over many hours.
When super-hot with the door open, you can do the pizzas and atbreads in a few minutes
When very hot with the door closed, you can roast things like roast potatoes, tandoori chicken, hot wings
etc
When cooling down from about 140C down to 56-60C you can slow-cook for hours (I usually do this
overnight for at least 8-9 hours) for super succulent pulled pork and brisket, or pot casseroles
Buy thermometers
The thermometers are your friends - I use three types:

A spot-testing gun thermometer, which you point and click at a surface and it will take a spot reading.
This is especially used for pizza cooking, when you will want the oven roof hot enough to grill the pizza
fom above and the oven oor hot enough to cook the base at the same time
A meat thermometer with a steel probe for testing internal heat of joints. The joints keep cooking slowly
inside even after the re has died right down. This probe helps you see how this is going
An ambient temperature thermometer - this is set in the oven door and measures the general
temperature of the overn, rather than the very local temperature of surfaces. This is used for keeping
control of your general baking, roasting and slow-cooking.

Step 17: Cooking in a Wood Fired Oven 2 - Pizza and Flatbreads
Yes, pizza can be made perfectly in a pizza oven - somewhat unsurprisingly!

What a pizza oven gives you that a normal cooker can't, is that you can get it really really hot. Because the oven is so well
insulated, it is easy to get it up to temeratures much higher than you get in a normal domestic oven.
The oven will also cook your pizza simultaneously in three ways. From the top, the bottom and the side. You get used to
how to judge when the oven is ready. This is made a lot easier using a spot thermometer to check.
From the top - The roof of the oven needs to be really hot - at least 400C-450C (750F - 850F) and because
of this the top down heat grills the cheese and all the toppings
From below - The brick oor needs to be 240C-280C (460F-480F) hot because it cooks and crisps the
pizza base.
From the side - this is the one you have to watch. The re will radiate heat straight at the pizza from the
side, so you need to turn them, as the edge facing the wood re will burn if you don't.
You need to attend the pizzas. They only about 4-5 minutes to cook and you need to keep a close eye on them to turn
them as the edges are crisping up into delicious crusts.
This instructable is not about recipes, so I'll leave you to decide what type of dough you use, sauces, toppings etc. For the
dough base, I sometimes use sourdough which has a distinct taste that some people prefer, but is more ddly and takes
longer to prove. You need to have a live sourdough culture going to do this. If I want to make pizza at short notice, then I
just make a dough using packet yeast which is much quicker to prove and doesn't need a culture. Occasionally, I use a
combination of soughdough with added packet yeast. This gives the interesting sourdough taste, but makes it much
quicker to prove and also adds more avour from the yeast.

Step 18: Cooking in a Wood Fired Oven 3 - High Heat Roasting
A pizza oven is just a wood- red oven. Because it can be red up really hot, it is great for roasting things. I have made
quite a lot of spicy chicken wings in it. It also makes really excellent roast potatoes and oven chips like nothing you will
get out of a freezer packet.
It can also be used as a Tandoor for making tandoori chicken. For this I just use a yoghurt mixed with a tandoori marsala
spice mix, that you can get in cheap big packets. I marinate chicken breast pieces in this for an hour or so. To cook, I get
the oven super hot, then get a generously oiled oven tray hot in it. Then I just pop the chicken in the tray and get it back
in the oven. They don't take much longer than about 5 minutes to start charring nicely. I turn them once to char the other
side, then cook a bit longer by giving them a shake occasionally.

Step 19: Cooking in a Wood Fired Oven 5 - Baking Bread and Pies
After you have used the very hot oven for making pizzas or roasting, it stays hot for hours, so you can make use of the
heat to bake in it, as it cools.
I have made lots of loaves of bread in it. This is easy. You do need to turn them ocassionally as you get more side heat
from the back of the oven (where the re is) than the front (where the door is).
I also bake pies in the oven. It takes time to judge the right time for baking. If you haven't let the oven re cool down
enough, you can get uneven cooking with too much top heat (great for pizza and roasting, not so good for a pie or loaf).
I've included a few photos of pies and bread with slightly overdone top crusts. These were from my rst attempts. It is
just about getting used to how your oven cooks. It doesn't take long to get more skilled at judging what temperature
readings will tell you about how your oven will cook something. Hand made ovens will all have their own quirks. This is
not a mass-produced thermostatically controlled fan oven. It has character and you have to get to know your oven :)

Step 20: Cooking in a Wood Fired Oven 4 - Low-and-Slow Cooking, Smoking
As well as high-heat cooking and general baking, the oven is really really good for slow cooking and not bad at all for
smoking. I usually either use pork shoulder joints (pork butt) or brisket, but I have also slow-cooked whole chickens.
This is so easy.
To do slow cooking, I usually pop the meat into a heavy cast iron casserole bathed in a well- avoured stock. I put them in
when the oven is about 140-150C. I put the lid on, close the oven door and just leave them for hours without opening it -
usually overnight. They then just sit there cosily cooking. The heat dies down gradually and gently cooks the meat. After
about 8 hours the meat just falls apart.
Once cooked for ages, I sometimes smoke them. To do this, I remove the cooked joint onto a solid cast iron griddle pan
and cover loosely in foil. I then get a small re of hardwood going in the oven and position two bricks inside the oven in
front of it. I then just put the pan on the bricks so it is sitting quite high in the oven where the smoke gathers.
Then I just close the door and put the cowel on the chimney to restrict the air to the tiny gap between door and oven
opening. This chokes the air to the re and the wood just smoulders away making a lot of lovely smoke. An hour or two of
this adds a rich smokey avour.
Another thing that is easy to do is smoke-cooking a gammon joint. In this case, I use the smoking technique, but with a
slightly larger initial re. This cooks it at about 120C initially then slow cooks it in the smoke. The ham o this is delicious.
Step 21: Cooking Tools
Finally, a note about cooking tools. You don't need many tools to cook with the oven. Most you can buy cheaply. I made
two myself:
Large pizza paddle/slider - You need one of these for pizzas. When putting pizzas in, I use semolina
(coarse grainy wheat our) on the paddle under the pizza. You can then slide it o easily onto the oven
oor. You can buy these paddles. They are quite pricy. I made the one shown from a galvanised steel plate
with some nice elm I had lying about for the handle. The handle is attached with bolts. Once tightened
up, I hammered the nut to turn the bolt into a rivet.
Rake for the ashes - I made this too, to match the paddle. It is a converted garden rake. The standard
rake tines are good for pulling out lumps from the ash when moving the re about. I added a croupier-
style at scraper blade on the back of head of the rake. It allows you to drag ashes out when cleaning, or
push the re into the oven etc. This is the same galvanised steel and is attached to the rake head using
pop rivets (blind rivets)
Long handled tongs - useful for grabbing the edges of pizzas for turning
Long handled barbecue spatula - generally useful for getting under things that are cooking to check
they are not stuck
Gun thermometer - highly recommended. This allows you to do spot checks on the internal surfaces of
the oven without having to put anything inside the oven (like your arm!). Handy when it is radiating heat
at 500C!! It has a little laser point to aim where you want to want to do a temperature check.
Meat thermometer - the probe allows you to check the internal temperature of slow cooking meat etc.
Blowtorch - handy if you have a re going for slow cooking or smoking and want to add more wood fuel
and get it burning a bit more. This allows you to give the embers a blast to have enough heat to get the
new wood burning.
Non-plastic plant-bristle brush - useful when cooking to sweep o any ashes fom the oor of the oven
before putting pizzas on it. It stops them getting gritty bits on the base. Also useful when cleaning ashes
out of the oven. Obviously you can't use any type of plastic brush. The one I have has some sort of plant
bristle. You can get these from replace stores

Great idea! I love your design!
I have build my own oven several years before.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.1156394567733684&type=3
Very cool article. I'm seriously considering building this. It would be nice if some basic
measurements were included such as the diameter of the firebrick base, the height of the dome,
the sizes of the platform, etc. You included a diagram of the dome but the resolution doesn't allow
for zooming in on the dimensions.
Thanks for the inspiration!

Good point. It's not that obvious.
I'll check and add the dimensions in a bit
I would really love to see rough costs for different materials if possible. One thing I'm wondering
about is how much wool you needed to cover this dome. And how much other materials.
Cheers!
Hey https://www.instructables.com/member/lindbergh27/ - I have done some updates based on

your observations
* I have put in some quantities and close-enough costs in the "Suppliers" section - looks like it
cost about £400 in total (about $500), but depends on how much stuff you can reclaim. Some
things you just have to buy.
* I have added the rough dimensions in step 1 in three new diagrams
* I have added a paragraph in Step 10 about how to estimate the amount of insulation you need
based on the surface area formula for a hemisphere (about 5 square metres for a dome of radius
800mm - 900mm
Hope that helps!

I am working on the diagram with dimensions. I'll post tomorrow. In the meantime, the dome of
the inner cavity is about 700mm in diameter in plan view and about 450mm internal height at the
apex of the parabolic dome
Beautiful build and brilliant instructable. I love the detail and follow up with tools and food
suggestions. one of the best!
Hey - thanks very much for your kind words.
Yes, it was a bit of an epic build - and quite an epic write-up. I wanted to fill in some of the gaps I
discovered when looking online, at possible ways to build a pizza oven.
I wanted to include food too, as an incentive just to show how great it is for cooking.
I was slightly worried in advance that building it would take ages then it wouldn't cook that well.
I needn't have worried at all - it is really great for cooking and it uses hardly any fuel because of
the super-insulation.
Really detailed!
I'm a kamado lover and specialize in BBQ, but can appreciate a good high-temperature oven!
Also never thought that the dome reflects the heat.
Cheers. It took a while to write it all up. I was trying to fill in some of the things I struggled with
when I started looking into how to go about building one.
The inside of the dome never needs cleaning, because the heat totally obliterates any soot build
up. I get a little bit on the underside of the front entrance. Also definitely check out ceramic wool.
It is a great insulator. I have used it to more efficiently do great treating on steel tools and I've
seen it used with a gas burner, to make a pop up kiln for firing raku glazed pottery.
"Heat-treating" that should have read. LOL
So fancy!
many thanks - it looks pretty AND it cooks pretty well :)

DDDD

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instructables

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven

"Dad - can you build us a pizza oven?!"

What's in this instructable

Importance of good insulation

Examples of food cooked in it:

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 2

Materials - oven door

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 3

Above - cutaway side view of oven design structure.

The general consensus was:

Design approach - structural

After comparing and contrasting a load of how-tos, I chose to

Design approach - aesthetic

A pizza oven is quite an imposing structure, so we wanted it to look good

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 10

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 14

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 16

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 17

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 29

Cutting bricks is ddly

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 37

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 38

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 44

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 48

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 49

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 54

Do not miss o this step!

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 66

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 74

A simple way to control your re

Alternatives for smoke control

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 83

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 89

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 96

This is not di cult, but is quite a big task

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 104

Use the right concrete and aggregates

You are not alone

Step 16: Cooking in a Wood Fired Oven 1 - Fire Control

Fire control of the oven is managed by two factors

A well-insulated oven can get very hot

First thing to note -

The thermometers are your friends - I use three types:

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 106

Yes, pizza can be made perfectly in a pizza oven - somewhat unsurprisingly!

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 127

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 142

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 149

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 177

Thanks for the inspiration!

Hey https://www.instructables.com/member/lindbergh27/ - I have done some updates based on

Hope that helps!

many thanks - it looks pretty AND it cooks pretty well :)

Super-insulated Black Glitterball Pizza Oven: Page 185

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