DIGS :
EW’S ECO HOME & GARDEN ISSUE
bac kyard
ovens
Bake pizza on your
back patio
pizzas to slightly blackened perfection. The thick brick
radiates heat back into the pizza resulting in crust that is
crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.
And pizza isn’t the only thing that can be cooked in a
A Jessie Jones backyard oven
BY C AIT LIN MC K IMMY
W
hat happens when a community of
potters, already having mastered the art
of kiln-fi red ceramics, delves into pizza?
It’s completely logical: They build ovens
in their backyards and soon have pizzas
with perfect super-heated crusts.
Jessie Jones, a local ceramicist and civil engineer, has
been collaborating with friends to build wood-fi red brick
pizza ovens on lawns and patios across the Willamette
Valley. His passion for backyard ovens stems from his love
of good friends, good food and the outdoors.
When EW contacted Jones to set up an interview, he
was in the middle of fi ring up his oven for a dinner party.
“We made three pizzas that night and there weren’t any
leftovers,” he said. “It’s a great way to feed a ton of people,
since the pizzas cook in 3 to 4 minutes.”
The oven design that Jones developed is meant to be
simple and economical — any moderately handy person
with a backyard and $400 can build an oven in a weekend.
“You basically need tools, materials and some friends and
then you’ve got an oven,” Jones said.
Unlike the oven you have in your kitchen, wood-fi red
ovens heat to more than 1,000 degrees and rapidly cook
wood-fi re oven — breads of all kinds are possible, along
with casseroles and cookies. “We recently tried making
banana bread with great results,” Jones said.
Jones has also been experimenting with unconventional
pizzas. “Some of the most popular toppings are caramelized
red onions and Gorgonzola cheese,” he said, “but we’ve also
been having a lot of fun with dessert pizzas.”
The potter-turned-pizza-artist loves to slather his crust
with Nutella or ricotta cheese. Then he decorates his sweet
pizzas with pinwheels of fruit and nuts. “We’re always
tweaking things and trying out new seasonal ingredients,”
he said.
Although Jones makes and uses simple brick and
mortar wood-fi re ovens, there are many different kinds of
stoves that can be installed in the backyard of a budding
pizza enthusiast. Beyond brick, stoves are built from stone,
adobe, cob (a material similar to adobe) and even cast iron.
They can be straightforward and functional, or they can
be elaborately engineered to fl ow with a certain domestic
aesthetic.
When friends gather to make and eat pizza, it’s a time of
community, food and fi re. “It’s a very social cooking style,”
Jones said. “Everyone’s in the kitchen together preparing
toppings and rolling out dough.”
According to Jones, a backyard stove is completely
accessible to anyone dreaming of creating gourmet pizza in
her backyard. He has written an e-book detailing the stove
construction process, and he sells the instruction manual to
the general public for $10. “I’m helping my friends build
ovens,” Jones said, “and they’ll help their friends build
ovens and hopefully they’ll spread like wildfi re.”
ew
Jessie Jones can be contacted at pizzaovenmanual@gmail.com for
additional information or a copy of his e-book.
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