Beer Keg Becomes High-Performance Pizza Oven

December 7, 2019 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

Pizza varies all around the world, with several cities having put their own mark on the Italian dish. To make an authentic pie in the Neapolitan style requires extremely high temperatures in order to cook the pizza through in just a couple of minutes. Armed with a beer keg and some ingenuity, [AndrewW1977] got down to work, building a rig that could get the job done.

The build starts by cutting the keg in half. A series of zigzag steel pieces are welded inside, in order to give the refractory cement more surface area to stick to. With the cement poured and set, a handle was welded to the keg for ease of use, as well as a thermometer to monitor internal temperatures.

Initial attempts to cook using the rig used a wood-fired rocket stove design. This had the drawback of taking up to 45 minutes to reach the appropriate temperature, so the build then switched to using God’s Gas, clean burning propane, as a fuel source. With a jet-style burner installed in the base, the oven was ready to start turning out pizzas.

The idea of cooking a hot, fresh pizza in just a couple of minutes has us salivating at the possibilities. We’ve seen other high-speed pizza ovens, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Beer Keg Becomes High-Performance Pizza Oven” →

Pizza Oven Build Exercises Forgotten Gym Ball

September 18, 2019 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

See, this is what happens when pizza lovers follow their dreams. It probably started innocently enough for [phammy57]—he got a pizza stone, then maybe one of those big rocking pizza cutters. Maybe he even learned how to toss the dough high in the air. But every time [phammy57] slid one of those homemade pies into the electric oven, the nagging feeling grew a little stronger. Eventually, he gave in to making pizza the way it’s supposed to be made, and built a wood-fired oven.

The most intriguing thing about this build is also the most important: this pizza preparer pivots on a gym ball, which served as the base for forming the oven. To do this, [phammy57] pushed the ball halfway through a hole in a big piece of plywood, effectively creating the world’s largest Pogo Bal (remember those?). Then he applied plastic wrap to the ball as a mold release, and laid down a thick mixture of vermiculite, cement, and water.

[phammy57] built the base from lightweight blocks, sculpting a nice arch for the top of the wood storage area. Once the dome was fastened to the base with the opening cut and outlined with brick, he cut a vent hole and built the chimney. Finally, it was time to add insulating blanket material, chicken wire, more vermiculite, and coat of plaster to finish. Take a brief look inside after the break.

It’s a long process of building, curing, and burning in, but the end result looks fantastic. We bet it pizzas like a champ, too. Probably gives this 45-second pizza oven a run for its money.

[Ed Note: If you’re still having trouble parsing the title, try it out with “build” as a noun and “exercises” as a verb.]

Continue reading “Pizza Oven Build Exercises Forgotten Gym Ball” →

A Clay Oven For Perfect Pizza Every Time

November 6, 2018 by Jenny List 27 Comments

Perhaps your taste for pizza has never taken you beyond your local fast-food chain or a frozen pizza from the supermarket, but there are some people for whom only the most authentic will do. A wood-fired clay oven and nothing less is their pre-requisite, and lesser methods of pizza preparation simply aren’t good enough.

[Jan] is one of these pizza perfectionists, and his wood-fired oven is an interesting one because it eschews the traditional dome for a cylinder. His very detailed write-up gives us an interesting insight into its construction. He’s taken the bottom half of an oil drum as his base, and built and fired the clay oven itself around a wooden former. We see his early attempts at a former which distorted under the weight of clay, and we hear about how the clay required reinforcement with chicken wire and straw. Finally, we see the structure being dried out, before an impressive display when firing for the first time. The oven receives a coat of Rockwool insulation but [Jan] has a way to go to learn the oven’s characteristics. Still, this is an oven that will last to refine the perfect morsel given a bit of time.

We like the cylindrical design as an alternative to domed ovens, which can be a bit tricky to build. An oven may be a bit low-tech compared to some of Hackaday’s usual fare, but they can be no less difficult to get right. We’re no stranger to novel flame-based cookery, perhaps you might like to also take a look at this rocket grill.

Insanely Hot Oven Makes Pizza In 45 Seconds: Avidan Ross On Food Hacking

December 5, 2016 by Elliot Williams 30 Comments

In the future, nobody will have to cook for themselves: the robots will take care of it all for us. And fast! At least if folks like [Avidan Ross] have their way. He gave a talk on his 45-second pizza robot, and other DIY food automations, at the 2016 Hackaday SuperConference, and you’re invited to pretend that you were there by watching this video.

Why would you want to build machines to build food? It’s a serious challenge, and there’s always going to be room to improve and new frontiers to cross. There’s immediate feedback: [Avidan] gets to taste and tweak in a quick feedback cycle. And finally, everybody eats, so it’s not hard to find “test subjects” for his work.

Continue reading “Insanely Hot Oven Makes Pizza In 45 Seconds: Avidan Ross On Food Hacking” →

PhD Crystal Radio Has Pizza Capacitor

May 26, 2016 by Al Williams 35 Comments

Crystal radios are old news, but great fun. What would happen if a PhD designed a crystal set? By PhD we mean Pizza Hut Deliveryperson and [John Greenlee] (who may not actually be a PhD of either kind; we don’t know) gives us a good idea with his crystal radio in a pizza box.

Pizza boxes aren’t the only food-related material in this radio. [John] makes a tuning capacitor out of cake rounds. Coincidentally, he decorates the tuning capacitor to look like a pizza.

The schematic itself is unremarkable–just a common crystal set. But the construction of the chassis and the capacitor make it an interesting project. If you know a young person that has any interest in radio, a crystal receiver is a rite of passage you shouldn’t deny them and this one is certainly a novelty. The picture of a pizza takes it even one step further than this YouTube build, which is nonetheless a good resource.

The instructions are well done, although some of the parts may be slightly hard to find. Germanium diodes and high-Z earphones are not as plentiful as they used to be, although you can still find them if you look.

This pizza box rig could be a gateway drug to more serious crystal radios. Or you could go smaller and try building one in a match box.

Build Your Own Backyard Pizza Oven

May 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

Don’t heat up your house this summer, build your own backyard pizza oven instead. We love to using our garden produce, homemade dough, and fresh farmer’s market mozzarella to whip up a tasty pie in the summer. But it can be tricky to cook it on the grill and we hate heating up the oven when it’s hot out. This could be a perfect solution.

The footprint of the oven used to be a flower bed in [Furiousbal’s] yard. He removed the soil and side walls, laid down a bed of pea gravel, then started building the brick base for the oven. The base is insulated by encasing beer bottles in a bed of clay which he harvested locally. Fire brick then makes the floor of the cooking area as well as the arched opening. To support the clay during construction he built a dome of wet sand and covered it with damp newspaper. The clay is built up in layers before removing the sand from the inside. The final step (not shown above) is to build a little shelter to ensure the elements don’t wash away your hard work.

Of course you need to build your own fire inside to use it. If that’s too much work perhaps you should try solar cooking?

[via Reddit]

Help us decide, should this project gone on LIFE.hackaday?

Hackaday Links: Sunday, May 12th, 2013

May 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

[Johnathan Crawford] isn’t bashful about tearing the insides of his truck apart. He’s built his own remote starter using a Raspberry Pi.

We vaguely remember hearing about a startup that planned to deliver tacos using quadcopters instead of people. We assume that company was a bust but here’s the concept in action at the 2013 RoboGames [thanks Don].

On the topic of food: pizza and joysticks… do they go together? Perhaps. Here’s a joystick made out of an empty pizza box (note the remains of grease stains inside).

[Jonathan] brings to our attention the problem of running out of fingers to press all the buttons on your Monome at just the right moment. No worries, just add some solenoids to act as extra fingers.

Apparently some Samsung cameras (NX20, NX210 and NX1000) can use their USB port as a shutter release. The trick is finding the right resistor values for the ID pin [thanks Janne].

Plagued with a tablet dock that wasn’t weighty enough to prevent the device from tipping over [John] filled base with lead to keep the thing upright.

[Helmut’s] bathroom had no windows. He faked one using an Arduino and an RGB led.

And finally, as a reward for all the readers that made it to the bottom of the article, here’s a gem of a project. [Charlie] was inspired by the recent logic combo lock post to send in his own plans for a lock he made years ago. Unfortunately he can’t find the pictures from the build but the theory behind it is quite engaging.