What pizza do you want tonight?

When I was five years old or so, I proclaimed that I wanted “to be a pizza pie man” once I grew up. That dream was rekindled in 2009 when April and I built our first outdoor cob oven, and this year we’ve successfully vended pizzas for the first time. I guess I can say I have reached that place of being a “pizza pie man” now, at 30 years old. In all seriousness, it was truly a thrill, a combination of many of my passions rolled into one very fun experience: natural building, pizza (duh), and feeding people good food.

In two nights at the Clear Creek Festival, we sold 130 pizzas… not bad giving just how small this year’s attendance was. It entailed a lot of work on our part, especially since I made all of the cheese from scratch (over 20 pounds of it), and the sauce, dough, and toppings were all either homemade and/or homegrown. And then transporting all of our cooking equipment to the site (but not the oven itself, of course!), and then baking for 4-5 hours at a time… wow. The smiles on people’s faces, all of the enthusiasm and interest in the cob oven, and the great compliments made it totally worth all of the effort.

Our pizza menu for the Clear Creek Fest

I was floored by the performance of the oven itself, too. Incredibly, the pizzas still took less than five minutes to bake four hours after the main fire was swept out! I kept a live flame going the whole time to cook the toppings/cheese. All that insulation around the dome makes a huge difference. We’ve definitely found a high performing cob oven design that works quite well.

Needless to say, we look forward to being able to vend pizza at next year’s festival.

Our pizza baking setup, all nicely lit up