Building The Outdoor Oven-Part Two

One Layer, Two Layers, Three Layers On The Base

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Well, you know what they say about good intentions? We wanted to get the outdoor oven completed over a two to three day period. That time table was stretched into a week due to the sky crying off and on most of the week, but we finally got it mostly done!

Last post I showed you our progress through the construction of the base, so I'll move this narrative on from that point.

Here we go:

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Once the base had dried for a day we threw a few shovelfuls of sand on top of the base and on top of the sand we laid old landscape pavers. Using a level and a trowel we leveled all of the pavers into a nice flat surface for the fire brick.

Speaking of firebrick, we bought quality firebricks for this project, They were the costliest part of the endeavor, It was around 60 U.S. Dollars for 18 of the 9X4X1 inch firebricks. We laid the firebricks on top of the pavers, using sand to make sure that they were completely level.

Next we mixed two eighty pound bags of playground sand with out sandy, silty soil and dampened it with water until it would hold in the shape of a softball when pressure was applied.

We put the sand in a compact mound over the firebricks as a mold for the interior of the oven.

Once the interior was molded it was time for insulating oven coat number one. Before we applied the coat of mortar mud we placed damp newspaper over the sand mold. The newspaper will come in handy later when you are digging the sand out. We also stuck a cardboard tube into the sand where we wanted the chimney to be. We then moved on to mudding. This coat was equal parts mortar and our silty sand soil. You want to make sure that you build out the base about four to six inches and sort of stack the mortar up over the sand mold not just smear it on.

During this step we also mortared and placed some standard red bricks for the oven doorway. My husband wanted a fancy arch, but after some molding technical difficulty and a slight engineering dispute, a landscape paver was placed on top of the bricks and we moved on. (It was ninety degrees, nuf said.)

After many wheelbarrow loads of mortar and sandy mud we had finished oven layer number one and went to take one of the many extra showers that we had this week. We let that layer dry overnight.

Layer number two was a cob layer. It was made out of equal parts concrete, hay, and our silty sandy soil (you can use sand). It's pretty fun applying this layer, and it goes on pretty quickly. The hardest part is getting your cob mixed to the right consistency. Think of the procedure as grownup mud pie science.

After this layer had dried a bit, curiosity got the best of us and started digging at the mold sand a bit to see if it would come out. It did! The inside of the oven is so cool, and the first layer of mortar mud cured up like a boss!

As it was over 80 degrees out yesterday, we let the cob layer dry for a few hours and moved on to the outer layer which was composed of concrete and silty sandy soil. We made this layer a little more on the moist side and troweled it on.

This morning my husband built a fire in the oven. It was really encouraging to see how well it burned, the little elephant trunk looking chimney is awesome!

We still have a few things left to do before I consider the outdoor oven finished:

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1. We are going to mortar over the cob between the stones on the base for cosmetic purposes.
2. We have to burn a nice hot fire in the oven and make sure that we sweep out any remaining mold sand. It will also burn out the cardboard tube chimney mold and any remaining newspaper mold divider.
3. I am thinking about making some adobe colored mortar and applying a nice, smooth finish coat to the surface of the oven.
4. We have to eat a respectable amount of pizza and bread cooked in it for quality assurance purposes.

This project was pretty labor intensive. We mixed all of our mortar materials by hand. The rocks in the base were gathered from around the farm, and everything with the exception of the firebricks, 2 bags of mortar, 2 bags of concrete, and 6 red bricks was scavenged from around our home. The whole project cost less than 80 U.S. Dollars, and I think we will get years of enjoyment out of the oven. At the very least it is quite a conversation piece. Common descriptors uttered by my friends have been everything from a little elephant, to the mountain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to "It looks like a poop emoji." Just based on the feedback alone I feel that the whole endeavor was totally worth it!!

The next post in this outdoor oven adventure will cover the finishing touches, additional construction tips, and most exciting of all, baked goods created and roasted inside the darn thing!!!

And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's cob and mortar encrusted iPhone.

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