Pizza Oven Heated By Aluminum Foundry

Tom built this brick pizza oven that is heated by a DIY aluminium foundry, and sent me a note and great photos. He says:

Eric, loved your pizza oven video, so I built one and it worked as described.  Mine only got to about 600 degrees, so instead of 90 seconds cook time like Naples style, it took me more like 5 minutes.  Not quite as much char and the crust is just not quite there.  I spent a lot of time in Italy as a kid, so I really want to try to get the temperature up without having to build a full size permanent wood fired oven in the yard.

I thought you might like to see my first attempt to get higher temps.  I took a portable aluminum foundry (YouTube video) and built the oven around it.  Above the heat source, I put a 8th inch piece of steel, and laid a pizza stone on it.  when fired up (which took about an hour instead of 4), the steel bowed quite a bit (you can see this in the picture), and this caused the stone to crack, so I didn’t force the temp any higher (controlled by amount of air pumped into combustion chamber).  I did get up to around 700 degrees, so I’m moving in the right direction.  Cook time was more like 3 minutes, and the taste is about 92 percent of what I remember from my childhood.  Hopefully by spring, I’ll have a trail number 3, with a thicker slab of steel and a new stone, and a front door to trap more heat.  I’ll probably order the Naples flour and tomatoes and pick up some prosciutto and good mozzarella.   I’m hopeful I can get up to 850-900 degrees.  If I actually do, I’ll send you pics and let you know how it went.

Homemade aluminum foundries are popular on the web, but I never thought of using one to heat up a DIY pizza oven. Brilliant idea, I think, and something I never would have thought of. A big thank you to Tom for sending us the photos!