Pizza Oven

I got a desperate call this morning from Chippy’s blog editor. Apparently, he hasn’t returned from the Sunflower Seed Collectors conference and the deadline for this week’s blog post is looming. The editor asked me, Tomato Bob, to do a guest story. Your just in time, I was getting ready to fire up the brick pizza oven for the first time. It took me all summer to construct it. The bricks were special ordered from Italy. Those ordinary bricks at the landscape shop just won’t do. My bricks were salvaged from a 1500 year old Roman bakery and are infused with those unique Italian aromas. The clay they are made of heats up to the perfect pizza cooking temperature.

Here is my masterpiece. Okay now grab your oregano, parsley, and garlic powder spice bottles open them up and stick them below your computer screen. Go ahead, put your nose up close to the computer screen, take a deep breath and inhale those wonderful scents. Welcome to my kitchen!

First order of business before firing up the oven is a good inspection. One thing I have learned since moving to the Woodpile this spring is, the Woodpilers are notorious for practical jokes. I found a whole pile of fireworks glued to the inside sunflower seeds shells hidden in the oven. That would have made for quite the Fourth of July celebration.

It takes a lot of firewood to heat up an oven this size. I got the neighborhood kids to collect it for me by promising them all a slice of pizza.

Like you see on the cooking shows, it is a good idea to gather ingredients before starting. I am going to need lots of sunflower seeds. What for? Well you will just have to wait and see.

 You humans have had it drummed into your heads that a proper pizza is topped with mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. I hate to break it to you, but your doing it all wrong. A proper pizza should have homemade fresh dough, sauce made from tomatoes out of your garden cooked with fresh spices, and most importantly it needs to be topped with sunflower seeds. (Although, I don’t recommend chocolate covered Godiva sunflower seeds – that can get very messy.)

Once it is ready, pop into the oven.

Watch it very carefully so you don’t burn it.

I put the cooked pizza on the table and cut a slice. I went to the frig to get a cold beer to go with it, only to return and find all the toppings were missing! Oh well, the show must go on, lets see how it tastes.

I have waited all day for this moment, my first taste of pizza from my new brick oven … my taste buds are on fire! Who thought it was funny to put hot peppers in my pizza sauce? [Uncontrollable laughter erupts from the blog production crew.]

 Thankfully I had a backup pizza in the frig that I made earlier in the day. I tossed that in the oven. I ate the whole thing, slice by delicious slice, while the production crew had to endure all of those wonderful aromas floating through the kitchen. (A word of advice, don’t play practical jokes on the chef unless you plan on going hungry.)