This is Why I've Started a Brick Collection: Brick Oven Pizza

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your bricks. I come to create pizzas, then bury them in my stomach. ” Mark Antony in Julius Caesar after discovering the magic of Brick Oven Pizzas.

If you’re wondering if you want a brick oven in your backyard, just ask yourself this question: Do you want a magical portal that can deliver you perfectly cooked food that will ignite your tastebuds and renew your vigor for life?  

Christa, my pizza partner, has a father who had a brick oven built in his backyard. If I wasn’t the luckiest person in the world before, I certainly am now. A few weeks ago we went over to break in the oven by filling it with delicious dough, cheese, and sauce. And hey, I documented it!

Here’s the peel, or the pizza docking station as astronauts refer to it. Once the dough was nice and stretched out, it was placed onto the peel, which was sprinkled with cornmeal. Then we put on tomato sauce, a few pieces of fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Now to blast off that peel into the brick oven orbit!

Here we are offering up our meager combination of dough, cheese, sauce, and basil to the pizza gods. The few logs in the oven summoned flames to heat the space a mere 900 degrees fahrenheit. The 8-inch disc of dough begins to bubble as it entered the brick atmosphere. 

You’d think this would be the time to drink a few Peroni’s and toss some Bocci balls, but no, not for a vigilant pizza maker. The pizza needs to be rotated on a regular basis so that every side of the pizza meets to flames face-to-face. A failure to rotate evenly results in a pizza that resembles a yin-yang.

After a few minutes in the oven, what do you get?

Pizza as if it grew from the soils of Italy itself. A perfectly balanced pizza that has a crunchy exoskeleton and a comfortable interior.  

The genius of this pizza is the simplicity. Biting into a pizza without having to compete with a bevy of flavors bouncing from tastebud to tastebud like a pollinating bee creates a pizza that excels in a few great flavors instead of being merely adequate. 

With the winter season approaching, I’m not sure how often I’ll get to interact with this brick oven pizza. In the mean time, I’ll spend my down time (time not eating pizza) collecting bricks and building a brick oven in my home. 

Many thanks to Mr.Cardone for providing me with an outstanding pizza experience!