Winter Pizza -- The Pompeii Brick Oven

It's been a while since we fired up the brick pizza oven, almost two months. Yesterday a friend called, saying he wants to build one, could he come and check it out. I suppose I should say "acquaintance" since he's never been to Elk Cliff Farm, but he seems like a friend. He's one of those guys who sends out good vibes whenever I run into him, two or three times a year. He retired from the Federal Reserve, which I don't hold against him since I have my own banking skeletons in the closet.

Anyway, Karen said if you wait until tomorrow (which now is today), we'll share some pizza with you. She didn't have to twist his arm. My job is warming up the big mass in our backyard kitchen. I couldn't wait, so first thing this morning I started a small fire and have kept it going. About two hours before dinner I'll stoke it up and we'll watch the firebricks get hotter and hotter, from char-black to white and then to clear, which should be about 850 or 900 degrees.

Actually, last I checked they were already turning white. You can see this in the photo, below. The lower bricks inside the oven are black, but the higher and hotter bricks are turning white. (You may have to click on the photo to make it larger.)

Here's a picture taken two hours later, 20 minutes before dinnertime. Note how all the bricks are clear, back to their original yellowish color.

"No scale," says Virginia. "Your pictures give no idea of the mass of this oven."

All right. Here are a few more.

Tired by Bedtime

A friend said she'd tell us when someone she knows hosts her next walk on hot coals.  I thought I wasn't interested until I found myself, for the second time in a week, splitting wood on a 90-plus degree day.  What were we thinking on New Year's Day when we decided it was too cold to kayak down Elk Creek to the James River?  After all, less than a month before that I started running up a mountain at midnight on a trail of snow.

"Gripe about heat, get hotter?" says Virginia.  "Gripe about cold, get colder?  Certainly you weren't fueling the woodstove?"

Right, walking on hot coals could be a good thing. Twice this week we stoked the Pompeii brick oven to make wood-fired pizza.  I had to split beautiful purplish walnut because our woodshed isn't ready for winter.  In five minutes I was ready to enter a wet tee shirt contest, maybe the womanless beauty pageant held this weekend at the Glasgow Riverfest.  For the third time today -- number 1, my morning run; number 2, picking the last peas and pulling out the plants

Time for a shower.  Cold or hot?