Owning a WFO...Research and Questions

I initially spent a lot of time reading Kiko Denzer’s Build Your Own Earth Oven, but decided that the cobb (clay) oven would be fairly high maintenance here in rainy Oregon. I picked up a copy of The Bread Builders by Daniel Wing & Alan Scott and decided that a masonry, dome oven was our best choice–especially since my main interest was baking bread. An Internet search turned up the Forno Bravo website which really opened my eyes and raised my hopes that even I could build one of these beauties.

It’s been interesting over the years that even though Alan Scott’s designs are no longer recommended on this forum, The Bread Builders book is still a treasure trove of information and terminology for masonry oven history, design choices, construction techniques/terminology, and bread science. If you’re thinking seriously of building an oven, read this book first!

Based on my pre-build and post-build experiences, here’s a list of questions to ask yourself before you actually start on this project. It’s important to find out or seriously consider an answer for each question that is realistic for you and your location.

1) No matter how good you are at hunting down bargains, building a wood fired oven is going to be a significant investment in time and money. Are you (and all directly involved relatives), willing to commit to a long-term project like this?

2) What do you want to bake? Just pizza or do you want to bake a variety of items? Remember that access between the kitchen and the oven needs to be pretty good...tracking mud into the house will not make anyone happy nor will having no place to do prep work for the bake.

3) How much do you want to bake at a time and how often will you use the oven? Is the plan for entertaining often, doing an occasional pizza for two, or looking at semi-commercial oven use?

4) Where will the wood supply be stored? Is it going to be reasonably close to the oven? 

5) Do you have neighbors that might not like the inevitable start-up smoke or the noise of a enthusiastic gathering of friends (and can’t be bribed with an invite to the pizza party or a fresh loaf of bread)? It's worth a little investment of your time to get to know your immediate neighbors and make them aware of your plans.

6) Do you want to bake at all times during the year? Putting a roof over the oven is one of the best long term solutions to keeping the oven dry & available all year long. Even if you have to shovel snow between the kitchen and the WFO, you still can use it to make a pizza or some fabulous bread. Want more of a place to party rather than just a place to cook a pizza or two...consider a screened enclosure to keep the bugs and rain/snow out while keeping an outside experience for a group. From my experience, the 18'x18' Dragonfly Den has a max occupancy of 10-12...less if you are going to work the oven while they are all there and everyone wants to watch or help...size does matter here!

7) Will you need to have a building permit or some other government paperwork for your build or enclosure? When I checked with the building department, I made sure they knew that this was basically a controlled, outdoor cooking fire and I would not be connecting to an existing building, adding water, or power. Those seemed to be the magic words...no permit was required for me.

As I said at the beginning, you need to seriously think about each of these points before buying a bunch of fire bricks or thinking you'll just stack some bricks and have a working oven.

(p.s. If you're living with another person...you better make sure they are really on board with the project! Go over question 1 again with them.)