What type of brick for pizza oven

Concrete Brick. Firebrick is built for the high temperatures that your oven is going to produce. Concrete brick should never be used, as they will deteriorate quickly and pose a real danger of explosion with the heat. To cook in a wood fired oven you first build the fire on one side of the oven, and let it get up to temperature. The oven door gets closed and left for a few minutes to even out the heat. The heat has been absorbed by the brick that makes up the deck of the oven and the dome and will continue to stay hot for hours.

The materials of the brick and the methods that they were created with are very important when it comes to both how much heat they can retain, and their durability when exposed to this heat repeatedly and for extended periods of time. Firebrick is literally built for the application and will last a very long time if properly cared for. One major consideration while building a pizza oven is always cost.

And a reminder — never use concrete bricks in the deck or dome of your pizza oven. Is recylced or reclaimed brick safe? As long as the brick is made of clay and is properly cleaned, many people have built fantastic ovens out of reclaimed brick.

Make sure the brick is solid and not water damaged before installing. What kind of mortar should be used? A refractory cement should be used in building wood-fired pizza ovens. Two of the most frequent questions people ask when building a wood fired pizza oven are:.

Brick ovens : a brief history.. Dating back to ancient times in Egypt and many other countries around the world. With the inventions of electric and gas ovens over the last century there was much less need for such ovens.

Nowadays brick ovens are making their way back into main stream society largely due to the wood fired oven pizza movement, inspired by the beautiful pizzas and calzones people enjoy on their holidays to Italy and throughout Europe.

People are making these traditional style ovens more and more frequently because they add value and character to a home as well as a great social atmosphere for any event or party.

Quite often people choose to build their oven themselves DIY , however there are many specialist oven builders who can build your oven for you. Medium duty firebrick. This is the brick that we recommend for both the cooking floor and dome of the Pompeii brick oven.

Firebrick will also reach the heat required for pizza more quickly than clay brick, as they are more efficient at conducting heat. Further, because firebrick is designed to withstand thermal cycling, your oven will last longer, though for most home ovens this is not an important issue, and your brick pizza oven will probably outlast you, whichever brick you choose.

When choosing your firebrick, look for a brick with straight edges for your cooking floor. It is important that the bricks in the floor fit snuggly against each other, and a curved edge will result in a gap between the bricks and in your cooking floor.

Red clay brick. This is the traditional red clay brick that you find at Lowes, Home Depot, and masonry supply stores. Clay bricks are made from clay and fired in a kiln. They are typically made from local clay, as shipping is too expensive, and fired to between F — F high enough to fuse the minerals.

You can use clay brick in the oven dome, but we would not recommend using them in the oven floor. There are trade-offs to consider. There are two shortcomings to using a clay brick in your oven dome. First, thermal cycling will cause clay brick to spall, where little pieces of the brick flake off, and could cause individual clay bricks to crack.

It has happened to us.