Pizza in the place, pizza in the park, come get your fill!

At the end of July a little group of Champions and their friends from round the North East gathered at Waltown Country Park to make things out of mud, and sand, clay and straw. One thing in particular, a mighty roman style cob pizza oven. We mashed up a muddy mix stamping about and doing the “cob dance”, a dance from origins in the birth or building. Some did a slow and soulful shuffle, others did the frantic 2 step and some even went in to the cosmic cob spin, wurling to new mystical heights!

With the cob mashed up and luscious we moulded a big thick dome made sound with “cobber’s thumb”, with a hollow in the middle, a chimney and ears and eyes, a pig nose and stern brow. And so, the oven was complete and needed drying

And the NNPA rangers came to the sight of the cooker and thought “what on earth is this!? And how will it make pizza?!” and so we came back and mixed a mean dough and made a proper hot fire in the hollow in the dome and the fire died down so we put pizzas in; margaritas, mushroom and pepper ones, even hummus pizza, and the pizzas were lush. The rangers said “these pizzas are lush”.

A few days later it was National Parks week. A giant zip wire was strung up over a reservior, an archery range was created, there where historical treasure quests, and other incredible things, hoola hoops… and in amongst it all was the pizza oven. The mosaic champions made the pizza fire hot, chopped wood, made pizza dough, prepped vegetables, kids came and the mosaic champions taught them how to roll dough and make a delish pizza.

For three days it continued, the champs ran an expert operation, happiness was guaranteed, Jerry (master dough maker and fire lighter) says; “If you read this article without coming to the park you missed the pizza. You should be jealous, gutted, because the pizza was amazing – you missed out on epic pizza.”