At the beginning of quarantine, I remember many people started to pick up different hobbies and activities to pass the time. I chose to paint, which I still do occasionally. But like most things we started this year, we eventually gave up and just binged watched TV shows on Netflix. I think that’s why I got stuck on the idea of helping my mom build a pizza oven. I wanted something tangible that I could say I did during this weird and unprecedented period of time. And as much as I liked painting, I can fully admit that I wasn’t really good at it.
I don’t know the exact date of when we came up with the idea of making a pizza oven; all I know is that one day my mom was thinking about it. I believe that this wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for me being home right now — which is why I can attribute the reason we have a pizza oven to quarantine.
Anyways, around a month or so before classes officially started was when my mom had the idea of building this pizza oven. However, it took a whole month for everyone else in the family, including me, to go along with the idea of it.
To get things started, we went into our backyard to figure out what materials we had, what we needed, and where the pizza oven would go. We went to The Home Depot to get the supplies, which was: six cement blocks (to make the legs for the base), a couple of cement bags (to make the actual pizza oven and the tabletop it would be placed on), and a bucket to mix the cement. It doesn’t seem like a lot of supplies, but we underestimated how much we needed the first time we went shopping… and the second time, which is why it took three trips to acquire all of the materials that we needed for this project.
First, we set up the cement blocks to form a base — this would act as the table legs to put the tabletop on. From there, we built a tabletop out of cement, which wasn’t that hard; we just used a piece of cardboard and wood planks to make a “mold” to pour and contain the cement.
It took a couple of days for the tabletop to dry properly and for us to smooth everything over while making sure there weren’t any cracks or broken sections. Once it was dry, we put it on top of the cement blocks. The blocks acted as the table legs, there were three stacked on top of each other on each side — constructing it this way made the height of the pizza oven a little above waist-high.
Next, we moved on to making the actual pizza oven, as that was just the table to put the oven on. Before starting this project, I thought that this part of the project would be the hardest and most impossible to do. While it was difficult, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. We created a metal frame that was in the shape of a dome with one open section where the inside could be seen and was big enough to fit a personal size pizza (think about the pizza ovens you have seen in restaurants for a representation of this step). After the metal frame was built, we taped cardboard onto the outside of the frame to create a mold in order to pour in the cement. Similar to the tabletop, once the mold was done, we poured the concrete in and checked on it every couple of hours, every day, for a few days until it was completely done. Then, we put the pizza oven on top of the tabletop and sealed the connections between the tabletop and the pizza oven with cement to ensure no other holes or gaps, other than the one open section the pizzas would go in to be cooked.
A few days of drying later, we had a pizza oven!
I know that I simplified the process because there were a lot of issues that we faced while creating this, but I think — in the end — it was all worth it because the pizza oven works great! We used it during fall break, and it worked perfectly; the pizza tasted delicious, and the experience was something that I don’t think I’ve experienced anywhere before.
I’m not entirely sure how long it took to make the whole thing because we took a couple of breaks: we had to get supplies, which temporarily halted progress, and other things just naturally got in the way. But I promise, it is not as hard as it seems, and I think anyone can make a pizza oven as long as they have a couple of bags of cement and the motivation to finish!
It was definitely a great way to bond with my mom, and I’m glad that I got to make the pizza oven with her!