Customer Reviews

Your Brick Oven: Building It and Baking In It

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This 84 page book is evenly divided between intstructions on how to build a brick oven and recipes for baking in it. I have not tried the recipes. I made an impulsive purchase of this book because I have been interested in building a brick oven for some time. I mistakenly thought that I would gain some insights and practical tips that were missing from The Bread Builders by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott. I did not. There is, in my opinion too little detail in this book to actually construct a quality oven.

Not what I hoped it to be. Not detailed enough to build a brick oven based on this book. The Bread Builder is a better book which I would recommend.

If you want to build your own brick oven for baking, you can't go wrong with (and simply must own) YOUR BRICK OVEN: BUILDING IT & BAKING IN IT: it's a bible of facts about the step of building such an oven, from suitable sites to using it in baking. Base, domes and construction are all covered, along with first firing and cooking tips. While it's more a construction guide than a cooking guide, YOUR BRICK OVEN serves both audiences well - and as there are relatively few other books on the market on the topic, it earns a place as a unique recommendation for any homeowner adding such an oven to a house project.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

There no way someone could build an oven by reading this book. It is a joke: no details on the construction or the materials to use. Extremely oversimplified. As far as the second half of the book about cooking in the oven, it is another joke. A few (very few) again poorly explained recipes and again lacking details. If you want to build an oven (I have) buy THE BREAD BUILDERS by Alan Scott and Daniel Wing. When I read "YOUR BRICK OVEN I felt I had been taken

Whenever you see photos in glossy magazines of beautiful people in stylish clothes sitting round in dappled sunshine, laughing and sharing good food and wine, do you wonder why your life's not like that?
Well now Russell Jeavons (of Willunga's `Russell's Pizzas' fame) paints us into a far earthier picture with `Your Brick Oven: Building it and baking in it' (Wakefield Press). The book is a step-by-step guide to exactly that and it has the immediate effect of making you want to turf the lifestyle porn, grab a bag of cement and work up an appetite.
The central feat of the whole process is the construction of the oven whose domed cavity maximises the storage, convection and efficient circulation of heat from the wood fire. The dome is perhaps the most elemental yet complex of all structures. Versatile too: from humble dwellings like the igloo and yurt to St Peter's Basilica; from the utopian Millennium Dome to the tower of the Hiroshima prefecture building. But it also echoes the hemispheres of the planet, the upturned bowl of the sky, and bears more than a passing resemblance to our craniums.
For these reasons alone, it seems well worth taking up Jeavons' challenge to build one with your own bare hands. A dome in the backyard - I'd like to suggest - will put you in touch with both the chequered history of human endeavour and the cosmos. Better still, build several and have spy satellites - or Earth Google - mistake your place for Pine Gap.
Jeavons establishes a compelling connection between the ancient development of the brick oven and the evolution of courses from starters to desserts. Conservation of heat and fuel is the key. When the oven is `soaked', it reaches the sort of temperatures needed for things like pizzas. As it starts to cool, it's ready for baking bread, and roasting meats and vegetables, til, right at the end, it's cooled enough to bake cakes and tarts. The book provides us with mouth-watering recipes for all these treats and more.
Instructional and atmospheric photographs, clear diagrams and stunning book design all further contribute to a slender volume that is educational, inspirational and easy on the eyes.

Stephen Atkinson
Adelaide
South Australia