Barrel Oven For Pizza Perfection

One of my very favorite pieces of infrastructure is our summer kitchen, with our South American style barrel oven. For the thousands of visitors our homestead has had, it would probably rank as their favorite as well. Especially those that have had pizza from it. An oven this size can feed 150 people a day. You can fit 16 loaves of bread on the racks at a time. If the oven is hot enough pizzas zing in and out very quickly. I have so many great memories with friends eating from this oven. It would be such an awesome addition to any sustainable community. Even after the fire has gone out you can continue to slow cook things at lower temperatures. I am new to Permies, so I hope I posted this in a good forum where people will benefit. Just writing this post has made me hungry though!

I think someone had fun building that!
Looks like some good thermal mass too Craig, does it take a longtime to get to temperature?

Beautiful oven and delicious looking pizza.  Thanks for sharing.

Nancy Reading wrote:I think someone had fun building that!
Looks like some good thermal mass too Craig, does it take a longtime to get to temperature?

No it heats up really nice. Within twenty minutes you can be cooking, if you have a good fire. I was going to build a traditional black oven, with the fire inside, but a friend that is an expert on black ovens told me this would be better for the kind of cooking we wanted to do. I am really glad I did. It is very flexible to use. And Yes it was a very enjoyable experience to build it.