Timber-framed outdoor kitchen - Cathead - 1:1 scale

[Canute]

Wood fired ovens are great for making pizza. Nice thin crust.

[Cathead]

Our biggest hangup on the true DIY wasn't the shape, we figured we could build a decent form one way or another. It was the nature of the dome material. This has to be right, as it takes the brunt of the fire's heat, and if it cracks later on you've got a deep problem (pun intended). Plus, we found various DIYers referring to have some material spalling off their dome on the inside, and the first time you crack a tooth on a piece of sand or something you've just paid for a professional dome but it went to your dentist instead. 

 

The dome we ordered is made from a high-end proprietary material and designed by experts, they sell these to private and commercial users all over the world. This isn't a part where it's easy to just start over if you screw something up. So we felt a lot better about the quality and reliability of that particular piece, knowing (believing?) that we could do the rest ourselves.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Cathead

[Cathead]

To  help clarify Roger's excellent question, I whipped up a diagram of how ovens like this work.

 

On the left, you heat the oven with an internal fire. The masonry dome and firebrick floor absorb that heat, while the chimney carries away the smoke.

 

On the right, once the interior is heated, you remove or push back the coals, close off the chimney with a metal door, and whatever food you place inside cooks from radiative heat.

 

Ideally, an oven like this should hold temperature for at least 6-8 hours, declining very slowly. So for example, you start with pizza at >700°F, shift to loaves of bread as it declines into the 450-500 range, then replace that with low/slow cooking items like a venison roast or a big pan of mixed root vegetables. When the oven gets low enough, you put the next round of firewood in so it completely dries in the remaining ambient heat, ready for the next round another day. So with one firing using a small armload of wood, you can cook all day and produce large quantities of food for the rest of the week. Far more efficient than an electric/gas oven and the heat stays out of the house.

 

If you visit a restaurant that uses these, like a nice pizza place, you'll generally see a small fire burning in their oven even as they cook. That's because they need to maintain the same temperature all day. But in a home oven where I don't have to produce pizza on demand from 11 am to 10 pm, a single firing will suffice if the cooking plan is set up to take advantage. And it doesn't always have to be that way, the oven is efficient enough that just firing it for a pizza lunch remains sensible. Wood is an inexhaustible natural resource here and in the natural course of our timber management for forest health we produce all the firewood we could possibly want for home heating and cooking. 

[Cathead]

And the oven structure is done! Here it is with the final coat of stucco:

If you're wondering about the odd pattern on the base (just one base wall with stucco), there's a reason. We eventually intend to cover the base and dome with creek rock held in place by mortar. So there's no need to finish the concrete block base with anything for now. The dome needs its full stucco coats to retain heat and be usable. The reason there's a stucco coat on just that one base wall is that we'll be building a large firebrick grill right up against that wall, so it won't be getting the creek rock treatment, so we decided to seal it in with stucco instead. It'll be all but hidden when the decorative work is done.

 

But now it's time to start building fires. The idea here is that there's still a lot of moisture in the concrete dome and surrounding stucco, and that needs to be carefully driven out to fully cure the oven for high-temperature cooking. So the official process is to start by building small fires in the oven, keeping the initial internal temperature below 300ºF, and then over the course of a week slowly build bigger and bigger fires. If one builds fires too hot, too fast, the danger is that the moisture isn't gently driven out of the dome, but instead steams off, causing cracking or other structural damage. By next weekend, if all goes well, we should be able to cook in it.

 

So we're spending today maintaining a small kindling fire within the dome. Here's the first-ever flicker of flame within, followed by a typical view of the first day's curing fire.

I can absolutely see the value of purchasing a professional dome rather than trying to design one ourselves. Despite the very tall chimney (something like 10'), the oven drafts beautifully, drawing in air low over the firebrick and spiraling the smoke and heat up into the chimney. It would be very easy for a poor design to just spit the smoke back out the front arch, choking the fire and the user, but this works exactly as designed.

 

Since we have to pay close attention to the fire today, to keep it going but not too hot, we doubled down on kitchen duty and fired up the adjacent smoker, where two venison loins (about 5.5 lb total) and a couple long salmon fillets are gently smoking. This is an old-fashioned barrel smoker that I run with hickory, oak, and fruitwood cut and cured on-farm. No charcoal, gas, or other fancy stuff. Just carefully managed wood and smoke.

 

Unfortunately, this coming week is forecast to be our hottest yet for the summer, highs near 100ºF from Tuesday through at least Saturday. Not the ideal conditions to manage careful fires, but that's life. One great value of working from home is that it's so much easier to manage projects like this.

 

Hopefully this all goes well and we have an uncracked and cooking-ready oven by next weekend! Thanks for reading.

 

[Baker]

looks delicious.
pity you live so far away 😉

[mbp521]

Looking good. It won’t be long now. I’m guessing that the process of curing the concrete and stucco will also season the inside as well. 
 

Also, there are very few things that compare to the flavor of smoked meats. 😁
 

-Brian

[Cathead]

 

3 hours ago, Baker said:

pity you live so far away 😉

 

If I didn't live so far away from most of you, you'd all be eating me out of house and home claiming you were just here to see my models!

 

13 minutes ago, mbp521 said:

there are very few things that compare to the flavor of smoked meats. 😁

Truth.

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

 

 

If I didn't live so far away from most of you, you'd all be eating me out of house and home claiming you were just here to see my models!

 

Truth.

 

Very true but other hand, look at the labor possibilities as everyone would need to be expected to work for their dinner.  

[Keith Black]

 You meat burners are are the reason for global warming. 

[Cathead]

As a geologist, I have no argument with climate change as a real process. But sourcing both the meat and wood on-farm as part of our forest improvement work buys me all the carbon credits I could want!

 

OK, I didn't get the salmon on-farm. But I did get it directly from a Missouri resident I know who teaches here in the winter and runs an Alaska salmon boat in the summer. We usually buy about 30 lb from him every fall when he comes back south. Far higher quality than the store.

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, Cathead said:

As a geologist, I have no argument with climate change as a real process. But sourcing both the meat and wood on-farm as part of our forest improvement work buys me all the carbon credits I could want!

 

 My statement was a jest. No doubt you've reduced your carbon footprint but unfortunately being totally carbon free is impossible, IMHO. Unless you're running butt naked through the woods eating raw whatever we all have a carbon footprint, some way more than yourself. 

 

 As for a salmon or any seafood, always buy frozen. Supermarkets mistreat seafood horribly. Fresh seafood for the most part is a myth. Very few boats are out and back in the same day with enough daylight left to get product to market on that same day. I know this having lived in Alaska on the Bristol Bay side where we were heavily involved in the salmon industry and we also owned an unsuccessful seafood company in Texas.

 

 What part of Alaska does your acquaintance fish?    

[Cathead]

Oh, I took it as a joke and meant my reply to be lighthearted as well. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

 

He fishes Bristol Bay, brings it back frozen. Sells most of his catch word of mouth across Missouri, delivering around the state in the fall. I agree, unless you live by the dock, buy frozen in general. Especially with modern flash-freezing, I was talking to a Gulf shrimp fisherman years ago and he was very happy with the quality preservation modern freezing could achieve. 

[Altduck]

18 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 My statement was a jest. No doubt you've reduced your carbon footprint but unfortunately being totally carbon free is impossible, IMHO. Unless you're running butt naked through the woods eating raw whatever we all have a carbon footprint, some way more than yourself. 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO₂ 

[Jack12477]

And don't raise cows for milk or meat. Worst methane producers on planet ! 🤣🤣😇

[Keith Black]

5 hours ago, Jack12477 said:

Worst methane producers on planet

 My wife might argue that point. 

[Keith Black]

10 hours ago, Cathead said:

He fishes Bristol Bay

Eric, do you know what river system? 

[Cathead]

 

7 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Eric, do you know what river system? 

Sorry, Keith, I don't. Can ask him when he returns in fall. He's on Facebook, if you have access to that (I don't) you might be able to learn more. 

 

https://www.facebook.com/BristolBayNerka/

 

 

 

[Cathead]

With each day, we raise the temperature in the oven a bit. 300...350...400...450...by the end of the weekend we should be up in the 700 range and ready for pizza. We're taking turns working outdoors (the joys of being work-from-home "laptop class"), while keep the fire gently fed. We fire it every morning, work outdoors until midday, then close it up until evening, when we fire it again. It's already holding heat nicely; even after being left alone overnight it's still reading an internal temperature of 200-300 the next morning. This is and will be our hottest week of the summer, and indeed probably the hottest week we've had since 2012, with daytime temperatures over 100 and heat indices closer to 110. But the shade of the kitchen structure does wonders, and that's why we're taking turns!

The best part about it starting to hold heat properly is that it's now stable at temperatures suitable for normal cooking, if not yet proper pizza. So this morning we inaugurated the oven with a batch of homemade biscuits, shown below going in and coming out, baked at a nice comfortable 400-450.

 

If you're wondering about the wood off to either side in the oven, we're stacking a few pieces at a time in there to super-dry from the oven's heat. This makes them burn all the better, and indeed is the long-term cycle: once you're finished a round of cooking, you stuff the cooling but still-warm oven with firewood to kiln-dry for the next time.

 

And here's the first meal based from the oven: biscuits with homemade elderberry and blueberry jams, fresh local peaches, and fresh apples from our orchard. And no oven run in the house to counteract the A/C during this scorching week! 

Tomorrow the oven will be hot enough to bake an inaugural loaf of bread. It's so exciting to finally be producing food from this year-long project!

[Cathead]

So we've been cooking and baking all week as we raise the temperature every day. Here's the first-ever loaf of sourdough bread, which made a nice simple lunch with sweet onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil pesto, and pickled beets (all from the garden) as well as homemade ricotta cheese (milk from a local dairy).

But today we reached the pinnacle. 10 months after physically starting the project (not counting far more planning, much less the lead time for logging and milling the lumber), we made the first pizza! Here's a nice gif I made of a fire blazing in the oven as it heats:

As the oven heated, I pre-roasted a pan of garden tomatoes and onions (shown here pre-oven):

And we assembled many more garden-fresh toppings. Apologies for the color balance on these, we had a green shade cloth hung on the south side of the kitchen building and it was altering the light rather strongly for closeups.

Here I'm inserting a pizza:

If the crust looks a little lumpy, it's because I (embarrassingly) messed up the dough, making it too wet. I've been making dough consistently for years, but I guess I got distracted with the excitement and it was sticky and hard to work with. The one shown below got a little scorched as we got used to timing, but garden potatoes & garlic with home-smoked salmon is a pretty good combination:

I promise I won't turn this thread into a long-term food blog, but since the purpose of this entire project is to produce good food, I feel justified in sharing some of the initial outcomes. It's also worth showing just how flexible this sort of oven can be. And to repeat myself, it was absolutely wonderful to not have an electric oven drawing power and blazing 550º into the house on a summer's day. Much nicer to sit in a chair in the shade of the outdoor kitchen while a few pieces of wood do their magic. We enjoyed a whole pile of pizzas while finishing off a bottle of homemade wild grape mead.

 

Also made more bread:

 

Now that the oven is in service, the next project is to build the wood-fired grill in the space next to it. Not quite sure when I'll get to that, but I'm hoping in the next few weeks. I'll probably also share a few more food stories as we experiment with other things. 

 

 

[mbp521]

3 hours ago, Cathead said:

I promise I won't turn this thread into a long-term food blog,

No complaints here. Post all the food pics you want. Everything looks delicious! And you had me at pickled beets. One of my all time favorites!

 

-Brian

[Egilman]

20 hours ago, Cathead said:

I promise I won't turn this thread into a long-term food blog, but since the purpose of this entire project is to produce good food,

WE strive to produce good models, what is better training for that than producing good food.... The process is the same... {chuckle}

[Canute]

Great job with the breads and pizza. Bellisimo! And so right about having an outdoor oven. I shared your weather over the weekend. I was on the Illinois side in Collinsville at a Railroad Prtotype Modelers meet. 3D printing is the wave of the future, especially for the one off items.

Your breads look excellent. Bet they taste great, too.

[Cathead]

Oh, Ken, you were only a couple hours away! If/when I start my model railroad I may especially need to lure you over here, long drive from WNC be darned.

[Canute]

We 2 hopped to Collinsville. Stopped in Paducah, then railfanned southern Illinois the next day. A few different rilroads, but just one active while we were there. Did see one CN train flying north in Du Quoin.

[Cathead]

I could send/take you to some amazing railfanning around Kansas City. Can all but guarantee traffic every 15 minutes or so, often 2-3 at a time.

[Canute]

Eric, thanks for the generous offer. I travel with several other fellas and I don't know if they can take the extra time.

[Cathead]

OK, another food post, but with a purpose. If it wasn't already clear, one of the core values of an oven like this isn't an occasional pizza party, but the ability to cook a lot of things over a period of time with a minimal input of energy. The ideal efficiency is to have a lot of things lined up that require different levels of heat, then progressively bake/roast them over time.

 

For example, Saturday late afternoon we fired the oven up to pizza temperature as some friends came over. We made a whole bunch of pizzas, then as the oven started to cool, put in two loaves of bread, then when those came out slow-roasted a large stack of fresh-harvested sweet corn. Many hours of cooking from the initial small armload of wood.

 

Sunday midday we fired the oven again, roasted another large pile of sweet corn, then a pan of okra (roasted okra is food for the gods), then made a tray of bruschetta from yesterday's oven bread and lots of fresh-chopped garden veggies. Those all became lunch, after which we put in a large baking pan with two venison shoulders over a base of tomatoes, onions, garlic, & potatoes (all fresh garden produce). That slow-roasted all the way to dinner, making for another easy meal, while being followed by a tray of sweet potatoes slow-baking at lower temperature that we'll pull out around dark. All of that from the one initial midday firing with a small load of wood.

 

Essentially no management work for either day of cooking other than the food prep. No 6-8 hours of heat being pumped into the kitchen by a standard range, costing us electricity directly and indirectly (through the need for extra A/C). Far higher quality; it's amazing how the truly even heat in this oven improves the cooking and flavor of everything we put in it. We got a lot of other things done both days because the oven takes care of itself.

 

And we have food for days now. About 3 lb of venison leftovers, a whole loaf of bread (already ate the first one), leftover pizza, lots of cooked sweet potatoes and sweet corn, etc. This weekend really demonstrated a core goal for this project, the ability to produce a wide variety of high-quality food with a small input of on-farm firewood, no electricity or wasted in-house heat, and minimal kitchen fuss.

 

Next up I'll be working on the open firebrick grill that will sit next to the oven, allowing us to do other large-scale cooking projects like boiling down tomatoes for canning, reducing maple sap to syrup, and of course normal grilling of homemade venison sausages, burgers, and all sorts of other stuff.

 

Another loaf of brick-oven bread:

Bruschetta:

Lunch of bruschetta, roasted okra, and roasted sweet corn, all from the oven:

Roasting pan of 4.5 lbs of venison shoulders, lined with garden tomatoes, onions, garlic, and potatoes, after ~4 hours. Meat falling off the bone tender:

It is indescribably sweet to be reaping the dividends from a project that took way longer, and far more effort, than we initially (naively?) thought, and one we dreamed about and discussed for many years. Thanks for your tolerance and interest, stay tuned as I keep adding features to the kitchen overall.

Edited August 7, 2023 by Cathead

[kurtvd19]

Eric this is amazing.  Tempted to buy one - I am just not up to all the manual labor you went through.  Not rich by any body's definition but I definitely have  more money than energy!  You have the oven under cover.  Is that necessary?

Everything you did looks great.  Would love to try the okra done your way.

Kurt

[Keith Black]

23 minutes ago, Cathead said:

a pan of okra (roasted okra is food for the gods)

 I beg to differ.  I grew up in the south and every summer, Sunday dinner included okra. And it was prepared from fired, baked, and stewed. To this day I'd be hard pressed to eat okra to survive starvation. Maybe baked in your oven, Erik, but I have my doubts. Just one of the foods I never cottoned to. Bye the way, your food dishes look mouth watering with the exception of.....

[Cathead]

1 hour ago, kurtvd19 said:

Tempted to buy one

This manufacturer offers versions that are completely finished; they'll truck it right to your door. As long as you have a route that it can be hauled along (they're not light), you could have this on your back patio:

A lot more expensive, but practical if the money is there. https://www.fornobravo.com/product-series/primavera-series-wood-ovens/

There are larger sizes, too, you can browse the site. We're stubborn and wanted to have some ownership of it, plus the lower cost was relevant to us.

 

As for covering, as shown above, when finished properly they don't need to be under cover. But being out in the open also limits the conditions in which they can be used. In our case, building the kitchen structure allowed us to (a) worry less about getting a perfectly sealed finish on the homemade oven kit, (b) make use of it in far more variable weather conditions, and (c) integrate it into a broader kitchen setting with grill, smoker, sink, etc. This was important to us as we saw this as an important aspect of our self-reliant homestead life, not just a recreational highlight (not that there's anything wrong with that). I fully intend to use this when it's raining/snowing/boiling.

 

51 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

I'd be hard pressed to eat okra to survive starvation

I'm so sad for you! I have family roots in southern Mississippi (among other places). We adore okra; sauted, roasted, in stews, you name it. I will say that okra is one of those vegetables whose quality is highly dependent on freshness. Grocery store okra is trash. Fresh okra from the garden is a different story. Okra does NOT store or travel well, it needs to be fresh-picked and used. And preparing it well does matter. I have found numerous people who thought they didn't like okra until we prepared it for them. But I do admit there's no accounting for some folks...;)