Your Brick Oven

brick-ovenl Russell Jeavon’s is one of my favourite South Australian chefs. In the early 1980s he became the first chef at the Fleurieu Peninsula’s iconic Salopian Inn an hour or so from the city and quickly had Adelaide food lovers trekking down the highway to see what all the fuss was about.

After leaving there he had a complete change of pace. In 1992 after renovating a lovely old 1850s house in Willunga, he let it be known that ‘Russell’s’ would be open just one night a week – for pizza. He built his oven – which is what we are getting to here – and, as the saying goes, ‘they came’.

Russell’s is like no other restaurant in Australia. And pizza night is a unique and wonderful experience. People flow between rooms, stopping to chat, laughing, helping themselves from the dessert bar. There is a wonderful, organic, hospitable feel to the place.

At the hub of it all is Russell, feeding pizzas into his oven and drawing them out again, crusty and fragrant. It’s enough to make you want your very own brick oven.

Which is why, several years, ago, Jeavons finally found the time to put down in a book, all he knows about building ovens. There are enough diagrams and handy tips for anyone to make and use one, and twenty or so recipes to get you started.

‘Your brick oven will connect you to thousands of years and countless generations of hard work and happy cooks’ he writes in the introduction. It’s a one-of-a-kind book, but if you have always hankered for your very own brick oven in the back yard, this is the way you’ll get the know-how.

But be warned: Jeavon’s says if you do ‘then all of your mates will come around expecting food, and then they’ll drink all your beer.’

Sounds worth the risk, doesn’t it?

Your Brick Oven, Russell Jeavons, Wakefield Press, Paperback, 2005. Available from bookstores.

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