Who We Are

Sam Ellingwood is not a culinary trained baker. He's actually a licensed attorney. However, he fell in love with baking after discovery the no-knead and almost no-knead bread recipes. After traveling down into the baking rabbit hole a little further he found numerous sites, books and people to help learn to bake.

After numerous mistakes, a few decent, and one or two pretty tasty loaves, he thought he had learned it all. Unfortunately, after eating pizza at a local restaraunt he began obsessing about pizza. Not just any pizza - authentic wood fired pizza.

Sam asked his father for help in fabricating a steel oven that he could line with firebricks. Sam's father is somewhat of a McGyver when it comes to fabrication. In no time, the first prototype oven was built. The wood fire definately allowed him to cook at higher temperature, but it just wasn't the same as he remembered from the good wood-fired pizza joints.

Sam went back to the internet and started researching traditional wood fired ovens made of bricks, clay and other refractory materials. Although it has been around for thousands of years, there is a lot of science behind making a property pompei style brick oven. There's a reason they are dome or barrelled shaped. There's high vaulted ceilings and low ceilings - each with their own unique characteristics.

After a few months of research, and convincing his wife that he wasn't crazy, Sam decided to build a pompei style brick oven. The twist was that this oven was not going to be built in an outdoor - or even indoor - kitchen. No, this oven was going to be built on a trailer to allow anybody to have wood fired brick oven pizza for their next gathering.

And that, is how Bigwood Fired Ovens was born.

Portable Pizza Oven Construction

Over the past few months, BWFO has been building a portable wood-fired pizza oven. We are not the first people to have a portable pizza oven, but we believe we are the first ones in the Indianapolis metro area.

The pompei style brick oven sits on top of a custom made steel frame built on top of a six thousand pound Schwartz trailer. The rear of the trailer has a stainless steel work surface. Undernearth of the oven is plenty of storage for wood, supplies, and safety equipment.

The oven itself is constructed with high refractory fire bricks, multiple layers of insulting materials and capped with a concrete dome. 

Pizzapolooza 2010

On Saturday July 10, 2010, BWFO catered a party that had been dubbed Pizzapolooza 2010. This was a charity event for St. John Vianney Church. There were plenty of games, drinks, appetizers, and, of course, wood fired pizza to keep the guests entertained.



This was a learning experience because this was the first official run for the recently completed portable fired oven. There were a few "mistake" pizzasThe fire started easily enough. A fairly intense fire was then burnt in the oven for an hour and a half giving the oven plenty of time to build up the residual heat necessary to give the pizzas a crisp crust. The oven held its heat fairly well for three hours with only a few logs being added to finish the desert pizzas.     

There were a few pizzas left over but not many. The crowd favorites seemed to be the veggie lovers, supreme, and of course my mom's secret recipe apple desert pizza.

We want to thank the clients, Fr. Brian, and the rest of the guests for making this such a relaxed and entertaining event. Also, we would like to thank the neighbors for allowing us to set up next to their house.