Anyone Know How to Build an Oven?

I have this dream that one day I’ll own a property in southern Italy near the ocean with olive groves, where I press my own olive oil and I will have a huge stone outdoor table where I serve bountious meals that I have cooked in my outdoor wood burning oven. So, I am a bit away from this dream but somehow I have managed to convince a friend that an outdoor oven is essential for her cottage in the Kawartha’s. I’m considering this version my practice oven for when my villa is ready.

I’ve already been up one weekend to start it off. We argued about measurements, built the foundation and got eaten by mosquitoes – the hard part must be behind us, right? Well wrong. In my grand estimation (really based on nothing but conjecture) I figured that since the cottage is on a lake, the area would be filled with clay for which to use as raw material for the oven itself. This is not the case – the lake bed is pretty much silt which is really sucky for building and holding heat.

Luckily I dug myself a small garden pot on Sunday in my very own back yard in downtown Toronto, and low and behold I hit pay dirt – clay, clay and more clay (as a matter of fact, very little top soil… this needs to be remedied for the garden project). So now I think that we have enough clay to make the oven, so before I go off half-ed cocked once again – does anyone know anything about building am earth oven?
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