Pizza in the Québec Bread Oven

My buddy Jean and his neighbor Jacques spent much of the last three years building an adobe Québec bread oven. While Jean and Jacques appreciate baking bread, their main interest is *pizza*! So on the occasion of our friend Kevin's lastest trip up from Whitewater WI, we all got together to make and enjoy some pizza. First thing, of course, is to get the oven fired up:




The base is steel-reinforced concrete blocks, the oven floor is firebrick, the oven itself is local blue clay collected and aged by J & J, using straw as the filler. The A-frame top is essential since rain and snow would wash away the unfired clay. It gets pretty warm inside the oven—the temp here is a bit over 500°F




Jean rolled out the pizzas and put them into aluminum pans (he's still experimenting with different tools and techniques: this is only about the 3rd or 4th fire). These pans were unsatisfactory, and Jean is now experimenting with a commercial pan. He has to use a pan because the oven floor is fire brick, and J & J don't think that they can rest the pizza on the bricks directly.



We made three pizzas: a margarita, a mushroom and anchovy and dry mozzarella, and a full-dressed with wet mozzarella. Note our source of REALLY fresh basil leaves!




Here's a closeup of the full-dressed:



Capers and pepperoni, and some special Geo tomato sauce. While we were constructing the pizzas, the rest of the crew whiled away the sunny afternoon out on the deck. (A house isn't a house, a flat isn't a flat, in Montréal unless it has a deck or a balcony!)




Jean gingerly put the pizza into the oven:





Where it cooked for c. 3 mins, Jean rotating it constantly with the prod:





It looked great on the way out



and a close-up look showed even better




The table was ready



Up close it looked just great




And the crust was perfectly browned underneath: ah perfection!




In the end, one happy group of pizza-eaters!




We learned a lot from this experience. Next time should be even better! I think Jean and Jacques have done a fabulous job with their Québec Oven. Would that everyone could have one in their backyard!!

Geo

Hi,

I am sure Bill/SFNM will pop in as soon as he sees your post's title. He has made a number of films (some are on this site) on making pizzas. Your friends could benefit from watching them. There was one of a pizza chef in Italy, where he was constantly rotating the pizza. He did have the pizzas on the floor of the oven. Why are your friend's reluctant to do it directly?

Thanks for the oven's pictures and why it needed a roof. I never thought it was related to unfired clay. I assumed it was protecting the oven from your harsh winters.

I will be a fly on the wall learning from the discussion that follows.

Thanks!

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:I am sure Bill/SFNM will pop in as soon as he sees your post's title.

I was curious when I saw the pizza baking in a pan, but assumed that a) they were still getting accustomed to baking with fire and wanted to take it one step at a time or 2) that is how it is done in Québec.

Unless they used some kind of exotic/toxic brick, there is no reason why pizzas and breads can't be baked directly on the floor as has been done for hundreds of years in all kinds of brick ovens around the world. The challenge is to tame the fire so that all parts of the pie are cooked to perfection without burning the bottom of the pie.

Regardless, that is a beautiful oven and some fine looking pies.

Merci bien, Geo. Great post and pictures. The Quebec bread oven is a thing of beauty. Thanks for posting the link. I find myself wondering whether these ovens were common years ago and are being revived or whether they remain a part of the backyard landscape all around Quebec. Had you seen any of them before your friends started their project?

Hi Josephine,
Tnx for your nice words!

There are a few of the original ovens left in some of the villages. Most of the remainder are protected monuments of one sort or another. The interesting things about the Québec oven are, first, its design, and, secondly, its materials. The design evolved, matured, over the centuries into the form it now has. Proportions between door height, interior height, and volume are fixed, such that no chimney is needed: draft air comes in the bottom of the door and smoke/hot air comes out the top of the door—a marvelous design. Here's a nice discussion. Materials are all local: the blue clay of Québec is a remarkable substance, perfect for its heat retaining properties. Originally, the structure of the oven was formed by bent alder shoots. Jean and Jacques were rather more modern, using carefully cut and assembled lathe.

Clay ovens have become sort of a cult object, and deservedly so! They really really do what they were intended to do, naturally and well. A thorough source for info can be found here.

Don't you think you need one in YOUR backyard?

Geo

excellent post Geo,

I really enjoyed the pictures.

Geo wrote: Don't you think you need one in YOUR backyard?

Geo

Sigh. Just imagine the fun Sparky would have clay-ing his own oven...if only we had a backyard...