Customer Reviews

Building a Wood-Fired Oven for Bread and Pizza

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you're interested in building a wood-fired oven for baking, this is a good supplement to Alan Scott's essential "The Bread Builders". Provides very interesting historical background, amusing anecdotes and a set of plans which are aimed a bit more squarely at the amateur builder than Alan's plans. I'm building an oven now using plans interpolated between the two. If you're going to tackle a project like this, get a good book on masonry techniques too, or better yet, a video. (Amazon, care to provide some suggestions?)

Although the book is a bit wordy, it gives the reader comprehensive history, information and instructions on how to build a wood-fired oven. The author is English and tends to refer primarily on British ovens and on baking bread. I bought the book to build an Italian style pizza oven, however the book mentions pizza only a few times. The plans on how to build a wood-fired oven are helpful and I am glad that such a book exists.

The book gives one set of plans without much discussion on how to modify them. I was hoping for more theory and explaination about size, height, chimney placement etc.

In British fashion, the author uses more words than necessary to explain himself (think Dickens).

Overall, not a complete waste of time, but less helpful than the title would lead you to believe.

This is a cool book on the history behind ovens, and I enjoyed reading it. You will not be all that close to being able to build your own oven after reading this.

Enjoyed reading it and understanding some history, but I should have checked it out at the library and skipped buying it.

Allen Scotts book is killer, but again, you better know something about building and be creative because he gives you about 80% of the information you need. That was enough for me to complete my oven, but there was a lot of head scratching and questioning if I was doing things right. The chimney was a big miss in the book with almost no detail, so I had to fly by the seat of my pants.

There is good info on the web and this was a good depiction...
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i was hoping to find some worthwhile information on building my own brick oven... but i was disappointed... Not worth the money...

you don't really understand how big this thing is until you see the finished product. Which by the way -- there are no finsihed pictures. I actually saw the finished oven on ebay. When it towers over the 6' privacy fence - you began to rethink making it.

I thought it was the wors exampe of a book on the subject

I would not recommend it to any one thinking of building one

There are other books far better

I didn't realize this softback book was from the other side of the pond. I don't have much use for the metric system and am real tired of the damn Euros and Canucks trying to force the US to comply to their useless way of measurement. Secondly, this isn't new material, but rather old rehash of rather mundane common knowledge...I donated the book to a middle school library...which is the level of understanding that's needed to get through this book. Amazon please don't recommend books that don't meet the same level or better than those I have previously purchased from you. At least Barnes and Noble can accomplish this simple feat.