Sally K and Alan's Earth Oven Project

Alan and I have been building an out door clay oven this spring. We aren't sure how long it will last, but we have made it a joint venture - mostly by him working and me supervising - but it is looking great and now we are almost ready to use it.

This is the first layer. We have a base of cement board for the basic shape and have added a ring of sand mixed with clay to begin our insulation layer under the oven to hold in the heat.

I have always wanted a pizza oven, but could not possibly afford one and so I kept trying to perfect my pizza and bread in my gas oven, and while my bread is fine, it doesn't compare to an artisan bakery bread. So disappointing. Then after some research on the internet I found a few websites about clay ovens and earth ovens. I was hooked! Since we live in the northeast we had to wait for spring and our project was born.

We tried to decide what kind of base we wanted for our oven. I wanted it to be beautiful and Alan only wanted it to be functional. We went looking for stone and - talk about expensive - that was a real downer! We persisted and went to a stone yard. Luckily there we found that there were some pavers that no one wanted. I think that the owner told me it wasn't this year's color. Color? We got them for a song. Then we, and I say this loosely, because Alan did the work, had to come up with our plan because when they were put together it wasn't exactly the size I was looking for, but we came up with our cement board plan and we haven't looked back!

This layer doesn't look much different than the first, but we put a dense layer of clay mixed with sand down for the base of our oven. Now that I'm looking back, I'm sure that I was in oven overload and trying too hard to make it 'just right' but at the same time, I want a sturdy and usable oven.

We only had time to work on the oven on weekends so we planned for about 4 to 6 weeks of working on this project. In the book I bought the author sometimes uses the ovens in the same weekend. I read more about clay ovens and some of them wait a month for the clay to cure, so I figured there is some leeway for each way of creating my oven.

Here I am looking foolish, but trying to create a willow frame to create the shape of the oven. In some areas sand is used and in others a wicker basket is used. I got some basket making willow and decided to try the framing myself. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It certainly was a bit harder than I planned, but I didn't want to use any wire or any type of fastening that would be toxic when it was burned.

Once the frame is complete and in place the sand/clay mix is formed around it - your oven is created. This has to cure and then once you fire your oven this frame is burned away leaving the shape of the oven. I love this idea and liked it a lot better than having to pull sand out of the oven before it could be fired. Having said this - I haven't fired my oven yet, so right or wrong remains to be seen.


This is the final shape of my oven. The dimensions I wanted is to be longer than wide to accommodate a fire in the back. The height to door ratio I found the same in 2 separate books, and in a couple of blogs, so I made the door 10 inches high to a 16 inch height (roughly 63% of the height), now if once my oven hardens and the ratio is the same I will be one happy woman!

So after seeing these pictures it looks really flimsy - don't despair. I reinforced with a lot more willow and some string and it looked really funny and ridiculous. I then covered it with paper mache. That part was messy but fun! It looks like some kind of elephant hide covering the skeleton, but it is just craft paper and my homemade glue.

Paper mache is easy and fun. My recommendations are to do it outside if you can because it is VERY messy. I did it in my kitchen and have learned my lesson! To make the paste you only need flour and water. You use 1 cup of cold water to one cup of flour. Then in a stock pot boil another 4 cups water. Once the water is boiling add the flour/water mixture and cook it until it is thick - it doesn't take long. Naturally you have to wait until it is cool to use it so cover it because it will create a skim layer if you don't. It will keep in your refrigerator for a couple of weeks. You can add salt if needed as a mold deterrent, but it isn't necessary if you are using it right away.

This is one insulation layer. It is perlite and glass bottles. They hold in the heat under the oven. It was an easy layer to put in, but you should use a mask when you use it. We placed a piece of craft paper over this layer so we wouldn't disturb the perlite as we were covering it over with another layer of sand and clay, trying to make it as level as possible.

Doing the project on the weekends worked great because we could let each layer cure until the next weekend. There are occasional cracks and they are easily repaired before you begin the next layer.

We let all of that dry for a week and then Alan added the fire brick floor. It was much too precise for me - I wouldn't have had the patience and he did an excellent job!
Luckily we were able to get used fire bricks that were being thrown out. I saw where someone got them for less than $2.00 a brick, but everywhere I looked the fire brick were between $10 and $14 each, so we were very happy to take those bricks off their hands and put them to good use. Alan had a hard day cleaning them up with not breaking any.


We sure used a lot of sand for this project. And a lot of clay. A couple of articles recommend marine clay, but we didn't know how or where to get it. We ended up with some waste clay and we purchased good clay to get the finished look. We mixed the clay with sand to get our mud mix.
Here is a picture of our paper template of the basic oven shape, figuring out the final placement of the brick flooring and our oven 'cage' above it.


Then came the part where we just covered it up with the clay. We did about 5 layers, so each could cure before the next layer went on. It was a larger task than I expected and Alan got great arm muscles out of it. The first layer was a dense layer of clay mixed with sand as the oven interior. Then came a layer of insulating clay - clay mixed with sand and wood chips. When the oven gets hot enough the wood chips will burn out and leave air pockets that will hold in the heat and help bake. Along with the insulating layer we had enough bricks to help fill in and be even more insulation. It looks funny, but it works great! Then finally we covered it all with a clay-sand layer for good looks. We added a tile for aesthetics because we loved it and Alan added a roof to keep it from wearing out in the rain.

The firing went great! We did 3 firings; one small, one medium, and one large one to get any leftover willow and paper. Then we cleaned it all out and got ready to make pizza and bread!

The oven works like a charm! It isn't as large on the inside as I wanted, but there is plenty of space there for 3 to 4 small loaves of bread, so it isn't too shabby, and the chicken, pork, and beef we have cooked in there comes out fabulous! I am very happy with my oven. We have been making all our family bread in there for the week along with pizzas, desserts, casseroles, and roasting
meats. This was a great project!