This past weekend we hosted a retreat for Breast Cancer Action Nova Scotia (BCANS), and among the activities was a sunny Saturday afternoon of pizza making with our new wood fired brick oven that I helped build. In the morning I made the dough and started the fire, allowing two hours for the dough to rise and the oven to get hot enough to bake in. I got the ingredients ready, which included zucchini and onion from our own garden, and around noon the oven was ready! It takes one or two test pizzas to really understand how hot it is, but once we figured it out we had an assembly line of one person rolling out the dough, one person assembling the ingredients on the dough, and one person monitoring the pizza in the oven. My parents were there and helped out, as did the women with BCANS, and we all had a wonderful time. The pizza a brick oven produces is just amazing because the crispy crust and the wood fired taste just can’t be imitated in a conventional oven. As I continue to use it, I’m learning which dough recipes work best, how hot to make the oven, how to position the coals around the pizza, and how long it takes depending on the heat. So on Saturday I learned a thing or two to add to my knowledge, and I imagine that is true for those who participated as well. It was a great day and I hope more like it can happen in the near future!