DIY: Brick pizza oven for under $50

pizza

Since the dawn of time, the quest for perfect homemade pizza has broken many a soul. Can roughly $50 worth of materials and a DIY brick oven-like housing change all that? I honestly don’t know. But if you’ve got a little extra time on your hands and fancy yourself a decently-talented pizza enthusiast then by all means, chase the dream.

Boing Boing Gadgets details an inexpensive home pizza oven setup consisting of less than $50 worth of materials. The bulk of the costs stems from a $30 pizza stone, while the rest is made up of locally-purchased firebricks. Everything fits into your existing oven, so you don’t actually have to build a big brick oven in your kitchen. Although if you have the space and the means to build your own gigantic wood-fired brick pizza oven, do it!

The basic process involves building a brick housing around your pizza stone and then waiting what’d probably feel like forever for your standard oven to heat up to almost 500 degrees. Apparently the added bricks mean added time, as it takes longer for everything to heat up. Plan for an additional 30 minutes of pre-heating. BBG suggests using an infrared thermometer to keep tabs on the heat, though it’ll add $45 to your costs. I’d probably just “give it maybe 30-60 minutes and hope for the best,” as is suggested should you opt to skip the thermometer.

Once everything’s all heated up, you’ll be subject to about 11 minutes of cooking time and “a more concentrated bake” since “the additional stones clearly refract heat from all directions.”

Here’s the entire process in detail, plus a couple of taste tests and additional ideas.