Your Brick Oven: Building It and Baking In It

Since 1992 Russell Jeavons has owned and cooked at a unique restaurant in an old cottage in one of South Australia's prized wine districts. It is famous in part because it's only open on Friday nights, but moreso for its fresh, simple food cooked entirely in Russell's wood-fired brick ovens. His pizzas are renowned throughout Australia, with fine regional ingredients artfully combined atop classic, thin, wood-oven cooked crusts. Russell's Pizza is the kind of place where friends and family gather to eat within sight of the golden, glowing kitchen; where the garden is equipped with warming braziers and outdoor fire pits for chatting, relaxing, and munching. It is an atmosphere that many of us covet for our own homes—an outdoor space where we can come together on cool nights for warmth, fun, and good food. The first part of Your Brick Oven is a step-by-step guide that takes readers through the stages of building an oven, from choosing the site to firing up for the first bake. Part two explains how to cook in the oven with invaluable tips for brick oven cooks, with recipes for sour dough bread, thin-crust pizzas, traditional roasts, fruit tarts, and sinful cakes and pastries.