Our first pizzas ready for the hungry masses

Amidst all of our timber framing work, we have been chipping away at our cob oven construction. In fact, we deemed it ready enough for a big ol’ pizza party this past week. The oven needs some finish plaster, but why wait? It proved to be a real workhorse, as April and I churned out about 50 pizzas (really, we lost count) for a big group of 40 people at the Clear Creek Festival grounds.

This cob oven is super-insulated with light clay straw, and the heat retention was very impressive. We baked pizzas for two hours straight, losing very little heat during that time. Pizzas were still coming out in a few minutes after that length of time. (Maybe three minutes tops by the end.) Needless to say, the oven works well.

One of these days… I plan on finishing writing my “build a better cob oven” guide, as an update to the original $20 cob oven post. I feel pretty content with this latest iteration, and it’s hardly any more expensive… just much more efficient in its design than our very first oven.

We’ll be baking and selling pizzas out of this oven during the Clear Creek Festival, which happens during Labor Day weekend. It’s going to be a good time.

Our latest cob oven with a fire blazing (and still needing its last coat of plaster)