Build a Brick Oven Day 6!!

We did it! We built a brick oven! Well, technically not brick. But we built an oven! Here's the group. Here's the oven. We need to wait for a few days before we cure it. But then...pizza!!

Here's the man without whom this couldn't have happened. Thanks, Church!

Build a brick oven Day 5!!

We started the day off by putting the insulation blanket over the oven. After that we used chicken wire to successfully hold in place the insulation. 

We then headed over to Sampson's house to create some pizzas of our own. Carter's pizza was just pineapple and sauce which was met with a universal stink-eye from the rest of the group, the group was determined to make Carter aware of his mistakes. the rest of the group then made real pizzas with cheese and all of the fixings. Jake is super proud of his.

To wrap the day up, we took our last step in finishing the oven by smearing stucco to cover the entire oven with. At the end of our day we completed the structure of the oven. It takes a week for the stucco to dry. After that multiple fires at different sizes need to be lit to cure the oven. 

Build a Brick Oven Day 4!!

Today was a huge snow day, but nothing stopped us from achieving our goal! Five out of the ten of us couldn't make it in (but Ben and Caleb found their way in a little bit later). The rest of us got together at Mr. Sampson's house and we prepared some pizza doughs for dinner but then we decided to eat them for lunch tomorrow. Mr. Sampson's recipe for dough will be outstanding we know!

After that we made our way to facilities to continue work on the oven and on the way there we had an epic snowball fight. Then we laid the oven floor down.

 Our biggest accomplishment of the day was picking up  the 450 pound oven dome up and carrying it to the trailer where we set it down and applied fire resistant mortar to keep it in place.

After that we put on the chimney and we are anxiously waiting to apply the insulation tomorrow!

Building a Brick Oven Day 3!!

We started the day off in the maintenance building, continuing our process of developing the base for the oven. Yesterday we finished the first layer of cinder blocks, and today we had to add the second. We filled some of the holes in the blocks with rocks and excess cement to make it more sturdy. We then laid cement board on top of the cinder blocks to create a nice, flat, even surface.

Next we headed over to Market Basket in Tilton to pick up some ingredients for the pizza dough we will be making tomorrow. We are looking forward to learning Mr. Sampsons pizza dough recipes and techniques while we wait for the cement to dry. Mr Churchill had a bit of a blueberry accident!

We also had time to watch a movie on how cooking can bring joy into peoples' heart and change their lives. Ben also enjoyed his first Coca-Cola!

Building a Brick Oven Day 2!!

This morning, our group traveled to Home Depot in Portsmouth to pick up some materials for the oven. We then visited Flatbread and were surprised with a generous free pizza meal (the generous folks at Flatbread donated it to us because we were with a school!) and it was absolutely amazing! Caleb from Flatbread was also nice to talk us through the process and showed us their commercial ovens that run 24/7.

Returning to campus in the afternoon, we continued on making progress with our oven. We finished the fundamental base onto of the trailer and look forward to a productive day tomorrow.

 The oven kit came with almost everything we needed. Hopefully it will look much better than this by the time we finish the oven.
















Laying the foundations was not as easy as it looks. We learned a lot about mixing mortar and laying cement thanks to Mr. Churchill.

Building a Brick Oven Day 1!!

To start off Day 1 of NHS Project Week the Building a Brick Oven group started to plan the foundation on our trailer that in the end will support the brick oven.

We then visited our last director of food services, the beloved Neal Shartar. We got our first glimpse of cooking with a brick oven. We started things off with him by learning the history of his brick oven and some simple techniques on how to cook a perfect pizza. And boy were they delicious!

Then we made our way back to campus and opened the crate that contained the brick oven. Once we had finished that we started to assemble the foundation in the trailer that the oven will live in.

Rounding out our day we went to McEvoy Theater to watch a documentary about cooking with FIRE!

We are excited to come back tomorrow to continue working on our project.