Hampshire Swishy Oven

[scottme]

Between July and October 2011 I built a barrel vault wood-fired oven using information and plans obtained from Rado Hand, a disciple of Alan Scott's, and who runs the Traditional Oven website.

Here's a picture of my finished oven:



Click on the picture to link to my album on Photobucket which has over 100 pictures of the build.

The final cost came out at something not far north of £2000. I bought most of the materials from Jewsons, using the forum's WOOP248 account code to secure discounts up to 40%, 70%. The firebricks and refractories came from Liam at Kilnlinings.

After several months' experience of using the oven, I remain rather pleased with it. We're still learning how best to use it, but we seem to be settling into a pattern of cooking pizzas, then baking bread, then slow-cooking a couple of large casseroles, sometimes overnight. As the days get longer we expect to use it more, and I won't feel that it's truly ready until I have done a suckling pig in it!

Still, so far everyone who has taken part in a burn has enjoyed the experience and been very impressed by the results.

The original build thread on the old forum is here: woodovenukforum.forumup.co.uk/about976-woodovenukforum.html

If anyone wants a private chat, or would like to visit to see the structure, just DM me.

[Calaf]

Hi Mark!

Now there's an idea! I recall having Cochinillo Asado in a Madrid restaurant. The little fella was only 3 weeks old, curly tail an all.

[cannyfradock]

Hi Mark........Really nice to see your oven again.

We are putting together a WFO photo Gallery. Can I/you post that picture in the gallery?

Terry

[scottme]

Feb 23, 2012 18:36:36 GMT cannyfradock said:

We are putting together a WFO photo Gallery. Can I/you post that picture in the gallery?

Sure, help yourself. If you go to the Photobucket album it has easy shortcuts for copying HTML or BBCODE links to any of the pictures.

[scottme]

We had a really good burn on Tuesday this week (April 2nd). The oven got properly hot. After firing up with HT pallet wood, I have taken to using "Blazers" compressed woodchip logs from SCATS to keep the oven going. I can thoroughly recommend them - they cost about £4 for 5 but they burn hot, last ages and leave very little ash. A pack of 5 is more than enough for a burn like we had. I kept the fire going in the back of the oven as we cooked, so the heat really soaked into the structure.

We cooked more than a dozen pizzas over a period of several hours and they were taking no more than 2-3 minutes each to be ready. Oven temperature according to my eBay IR thermometer was between 500 and 600°C!

This evening, April 6th, 4 days later, I checked the temperature inside the oven and it's still about 26-28°C (and we've had frosts overnight!). That's what you get with high thermal mass ovens like this!

Contributing to the success was my minimalist pizza dough: high-protein Canadian flour, 68-70% water, 2% salt, 1% quick action yeast. No oil, and no sugar. Dough was mixed in the Kenwood and left at room temp for about 3 hours or more. Knock back, divide into lumps of 180 grams per pizza. Perfect. I used about 3kg of flour and what was left over became a lovely loaf.

I was too tired and drunk to make a casserole this time, but it won't be long before I fire the beast up again, and I have some venison in the freezer that will do very nicely.