The Brick Oven Page

Backyard adobe - We built this simple oven at our neighbour's 15 years ago. It is based on the traditional Québec oven shape, an elongated dome. Click on image for assembly photos.

Building an Horno: the Adobe Bread Oven
by Michael Moquin - Detailed adobe instructions.

Greg's Earth Oven
Good adobe oven building instructions with illustrations.

Ben's Art - nice selection of clay ovens modeled on "Bread Ovens of Quebec"

Ovens by Rado Hand. He has an extensive Wood Burning Oven Website, including oven plans,
pizza instructions, and more. Highly recommended for amateur oven builders.

Ovencrafters - simple, high efficiency insulated design developed by Alan Scott. Proven in a range of sizes and applications including home, restaurants and bakeries. Click on Alan to join him for a seminar.

Click here to order. by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott Definitive work on authentic hearth breads. Includes instructions for building a backyard bake oven. "Wing and Scott do more than get the details right: they get the right details. It is difficult for me to imagine any baker, amateur or professional, coming away from this book without having learned something significant, even profound, about the art of bread baking." -Thom Leonard, author of The Bread Book Retained Heat Oven Data - now available in the book. Brick Oven Map on Google August Vanderdonckt writes: The map allows brick oven fans to find out if they are close to somebody who already has one. It enables people to upload pictures, communicate with each other directly and locate ovens geographically. August Vanderdonckt's detailed photo record of building an Alan Scott oven. Frankie G's Pizza Oven Project - good photo record and pizza info. Tom's oven. Build Your Own Earth Oven Click here to order A simple, fully-illustrated handbook for making an oven from earthen materials (similar to adobe and cob). Provides clear, step-by-step instructions for building and firing the oven. Also complete directions for making sourdough bread in the best (and simplest) artisan tradition.  Click here to order This unique study of the role of the bread oven in rural Quebec society also gives complete instructions on how to build a traditional outdoor bread oven. 115 pages, many illustrations. More Books on Baking and Masonry

• Restaurant Pizza Oven Workshop with Pat Manley
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2005
  
• Cob Oven Workshop with Tom Trout
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2004
  
• French Bake Oven Workshop with Norbert Senf
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2003
  
  
• Backyard Pizza Oven Workshop with Pat Manley
  MHA Annual Meeting, 2000
  
  
• One Hour Oven
  

• 
  Pat Manley recently built a kitchen bake oven for Billy Joel
  at his house on Long Island.

• Backyard Bakeoven Workshop with Norbert Senf
  step-by-step construction photos of a 32" X 36" oven.
  
  
  
  
  Hikary Fukazawa, a participant at the 2003 French bake oven workshop, returned to Japan and built his own oven. Hikari writes:

  Here is the picture of my bake oven.
  Our bakery is going so well.
  Last Saturday we sold out 30 pizza at the Saturday evening market.
  Of course I baked by wood fire.
  Every day my wife Shuko is baking 10kg wheat flour and selling out in a short time.
  We will increase products little by little.
  But we will keep making hand made bread.
  

• Russian Bake Oven Drawings

  30 pages
  2Mb Word .doc file
  

  

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(above) Amish style "Squirrel Tail" oven at Old Salem, NC- see MHA 2000 Meeting for some details. on this, and on a backyard pizza oven workshop.

Ben Sotero and crew with the new teaching oven at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
details

• BlackOven
  Good site by a brick oven enthusiast, including recipes and baking info.
• Castable Oven
  step-by-step construction photos of a refractory concrete oven.
• Commercial Castable Oven
  good photos of the manufacturing process, including a unique safety test
  
  

(above) Backyard oven by Phil Connor, Britain.

• Indian Tandoor
  Pier's Thompson's excellent site on building and using a traditional Indian Tandoor.
• Heat-Kit white oven - this oven is an option on the Heat-Kit masonry heating system and is the most developed masonry heater oven design. Check out oven testing at Lopez Labs
• Traditional French Oven - from Gasogne region, southwest of Bordeaux. Similar shape to Quebec oven, built from brick. A well-illustrated CD (in French) on brick dome oven construction is available from this web site.
• Cob Oven - An Experiment in Progress
  Interesting oven experiments, including a novel firing technique
• Prefab Ovens - examples of several systems manufactured in Europe and North America.
• More Prefabs:
  • Fayol -Excellent oven made from a unique clay deposit in Provence, France, that has been used for ovens since Roman times.
  • Fornobravo: precast and prefabricated brick ovens from Italy. The site includes a set of
    brick oven plans
  • EarthStone - Good website.
  • Renato Precast Ovens - the oldest oven precaster in the United States.
  • Mugnaini Imports - California company importing high quality Italian ovens.
  • Beech - Australian dome shaped oven that appears to be very well engineered. Excellent website.
  • Superior Clay - Clay oven manufactured in Ohio
    
  • Backyard Gourmet - lightweight, assembled
  • Golden Embers - Australia, South Africa
• Catamount Brick Ovens - Peter Moore Masonry Inc. builds domestic beehive ovens throughout the Northeast.
• Electric Brick Ovens
  • Small Domestic - by Breadstone
  • Large Domestic - at Masonry Stove Builders
• 
  Fireplace/ Bakeoven Combo - Family room fireplace preheats kitchen bakeoven. Rammed earth house, Saltspring Island, BC. Technical design and custom refractory components by Masonry Stove Builders. Phillip Van Horn, architect. Richard Dakin, mason
• Kitchen Cooking Fireplace with Bakeoven - by Biofire
• Custom white oven for a Colonial fireplace - by Masonry Stove Builders.
• Masonry heater bakeoven feedback from Bill Derrick

Bakeoven by Doug Wood. Click on image for more information

Commercial Ovens

Traditional French commercial ovens

• Little Stream (built by Masonry Stove Builders) - 4 foot by 6 foot hearth, this oven was producing 1800 loaves per week at Little Stream Bakery near Perth, Ontario.

• Montreal Matzoh Oven Rebuild - Rebuild of a large gas/wood hybrid oven
• Building Heather's Oven - construction sequence of an Alan Scott style 4' X 6' oven.
• drawings of a traditional French commercial design with a separate firebox.
• 1930's - 1950's Finnish Commercial - This double deck design was presented at the 1997 MHA meeting by Heikki Hyytiainen and is from a 1951 book from Finland.
• Oven by Pat Manley - construction photos.
• Catamount Brick Ovens - Peter Moore Masonry Inc. builds commercial restaurant ovens throughout the Northeast. Link to his website

Spanish Llopis oven with revolving hearth, Acme Bakery, Berkley. The Farjas is similar.

• German 1930's Commercial - this plan is from a German masonry textbook from the 1930's.
• 1900's American - the oven at Black Diamond bakery in Washington state has been in continuous use for over 90 years. It has a 10 foot by 12 foot hearth. Photos.
• Historical oven in Waterdown, Ontario. We partially documented this recently unearthed 10 X 10 oven.

Sourdough Calculator

Our Excel spreadsheet template that simplifies "baker's percentage" sourdough calculations

Interesting Links

Boulangerie Anna
Anna is my sister in law. She became a bread head about 10 years ago after working at Terra Breads in Vancouver. She now has her own bakery on the French Riviera, and it is one of the best bakeries in France.

The Bread Bakers' Forum
Comprehensive website maintained by Beth Hinkle . Includes brick oven page, including list of builders, manufacturers, websites, books, articles.

The Bread Bakers Guild of America

San Francisco Baking Institute
Bread baking classes and bakery consulting

Cafe Beaujolais - great place, great website. They have an early Alan Scott oven.