Does the fire brick on the oven floor have grout?
No, the firebricks forming the hearth are set into a very thin layer of 50/50 fireclay and sand, per Alan Scott’s instructions. Everything else is set with heat-resistant mortar. I’m afraid of building an oven and then having an uneven cooking surface. I was told the inserts with the Italian ceramic bottoms eliminated this problem. The bricks are pretty darned even. When you set them into the clay/sand paste, you press on them with a board to level them out. It works well enough. At $750 for a homemade brick oven and well over $5000 for a factory-made oven, I’ll take the bricks, even or not. Besides, I think there’s nothing more charming than the faint impression of bricks on the bottom of a crusty hearth-baked loaf. This can go too far, though. From the Tom Jaine book that I mentioned earlier: [In the Wiltshire village of Purton] Job Jenkins was loitering in the churchyard when he had the brainwave to use the old tombstones as a new floor for his oven. Quickly coming to an arrangement
No, the firebricks forming the hearth are set into a very thin layer of 50/50 fireclay and sand, per Alan Scott’s instructions. Everything else is set with heat-resistant mortar. I’m afraid of building an oven and then having an uneven cooking surface. I was told the inserts with the Italian ceramic bottoms eliminated this problem. The bricks are pretty darned even. When you set them into the clay/sand paste, you press on them with a board to level them out. It works well enough. At $750 for a homemade brick oven and well over $5000 for a factory-made oven, I’ll take the bricks, even or not. Besides, I think there’s nothing more charming than the faint impression of bricks on the bottom of a crusty hearth-baked loaf. This can go too far, though. From the Tom Jaine book that I mentioned earlier: [In the Wiltshire village of Purton] Job Jenkins was loitering in the churchyard when he had the brainwave to use the old tombstones as a new floor for his oven. Quickly coming to an arrangement
