The earth oven

There is a pizza place just down the street from us called Punch Pizza. They have amazing Neapolitan pizza made in a huge earth oven, and it is one of Mike's favorite restaurants in town.

Somewhere between Punch Pizza and my sister's place, Mike recently decided to make his own version of the wood fired oven, and the pizza. Here is Mike making the oven with our neighbor Bert. They built the base, and I got to help with the mud. First we stomped it with our feet. It has been a long time since I have squished mud between my toes!

Then they put the mud on a sand form to make the oven. You can see it's quite an art.

We had the inaugural pizze bake-off last night. My friend Julia joined us, and the first pizza came out with perfectly bubbling cheesey goodness.

We do have a few bugs to work out, though. Instead of the hours of bake time we expected, by the time we got to pizza #3 the oven had fallen to about 200 degrees. We will continue to perfect our craft, and when we do, watch out Punch!