Mozzarella from Mulshi: our morning cheese run
Milk at 5 am, curd stretched by hand at 8, on our pizzas by 6 pm: how fresh mozzarella reaches the oven.
Building our oven from Kolhapur brick
Six weeks, four tonnes of brick and one cracked dome.
When we opened in 2021 we could have imported an oven from Italy. Instead we built one with a mason from Kolhapur, using local firebrick and clay.
The floor is a single layer of thick firebrick laid on a bed of sand and vermiculite, which stores heat and keeps it from escaping downwards. The dome is built brick by brick over a sand form, then covered with insulating blanket and a final layer of lime plaster. It took six weeks and about four tonnes of material.
Our first dome cracked during the curing fire, because we heated it too fast. We learnt that a new oven must be dried over a week, with small fires that grow each day. The second dome has held since.
We burn seasoned mango wood bought from orchards near Junnar when old trees are cut. It burns hot and clean. The oven takes about three hours to reach 450 °C and is lit at 2 pm every day so it is ready for the first pizza at 5.
