Californo Blog

Pizza is one of the world’s most popular foods. We all love a hot slice of pizza pie and if it’s fresh out of a wood-fired brick pizza oven, all the better!

Over time, you may find your friends and family decline your offer of a fresh wood-fired pizza. It seems unlikely, we know, but some people like a bit of diversity in their diet. Some people think eating pizza seven days a week is too much. Not us. Just some people.

For those people, we’ve taken a look at a few other things you can cook in your outdoor brick pizza oven. Pizza ovens are incredibly versatile and can be used to cook meat, fish, bread, cakes and more!

1) Cook the Best Steak of Your Life in a Brick Pizza Oven

The first thing to consider on your journey toward the best steak of your life is fuel. The wood you use as fuel to heat your oven will have an impact on the taste of your food. Only hardwoods are suitable for use in a pizza oven.

Burning oak creates a woody, smoky flavor that works well with most foods. Hickory is another favorite and gives meat that traditional BBQ flavor. When it comes to steak, super-smoky mesquite wood is the best choice.

You can cook your steak using a chargrilling pan or a rack, both of which will need to be pre-heated in the oven. Once your oven has reached optimum roasting temperature (around 450℉) you can begin cooking. Drizzle your steak with a little olive oil and seasoning on both sides and slap it on the grill pan or rack, turning part way through cooking. Cook to suit your taste and enjoy!

2) Baking Bread in a Brick Pizza Oven

It used to be that bread was baked in brick ovens that were heated with the flames of burning wood. Today, most of us buy our bread in plastic bags from the grocery store. This bread is often tasteless, dense and so packed with preservatives it can last for weeks without growing mold. Wouldn’t you like to have fresh, artisanal loaves, baked in your own back garden? Of course, you would!

Baking bread in your brick pizza oven is easy. There are many recipes out there for you to discover and experiment with, like this easy no-knead dough recipe. We have a few general tips to get you on your way to baking the perfect loaf.

• Ensure the floor of your brick pizza oven is evenly heated before baking your loaves. A good bake is only possible if your oven is ready for it!
• You can’t rely on steam in a wood-fired brick oven to give your loaf a good rise. Instead, you need to make a dough that is much wetter than normal.
• Make sure you give your loaf enough time to rise. A long rise is key to ensure your bread is airy when baked.
• You should have a firm base to your loaf after about 20 minutes of baking. After that, you can rotate the loaf every 10 or 15 minutes so all sides cook evenly.

Once the loaf has cooled it’s ready to be torn into and devoured!

3) Cook Blackened Fish in Your Brick Pizza Oven

A brick pizza oven is the perfect place to cook a whole fish or two. The heat inside the oven gently steams the fish while contact with a searing hot baking tray will give the fish a crispy blackened skin. The Mediterranean technique of salt-roasting fish works great in a pizza oven.

First heat your oven to optimum temperature then let it cool a little until it reaches a roasting temperature of around 450 ℉. Prepare your fish (seabass or similar works well) by creating a marinade of melted butter, diced garlic, thyme, and lemon juice. Cover the marinaded fish with a salt crust made from egg whites and salt. After around 30 minutes the salt crust will be baked hard and brown. Crack the salt crust away from the fish and enjoy with rice or potatoes and salad.

4) Brick Pizza Oven-Baked Cakes and Desserts

Your brick pizza oven can retain heat for hours. Once you’ve cooked your main course, why not use the oven’s remaining heat to cook your dessert! Pretty much any kind of cake or baked dessert can be cooked in a pizza oven. Your wood-fired pizza oven may infuse your dessert with a smoky flavor that varies in intensity depending on what sort of wood you use. This flavor works well with desserts containing fruit or plain desserts like Dutch Pancakes.

Here are a few of our favorite dessert recipes, all of which work well in a brick pizza oven.

• Who doesn’t love an Apple Brown Betty? This recipe from the Food Network would cook perfectly in a cooling pizza oven and infuse the apples in the Betty with a delicious woody flavor.
• This Gingerbread recipe from Once Upon a Chef would also work beautifully in a pizza oven. Ginger tastes even more delicious when it is infused with a smoky taste and the cake is dense enough that it can withstand high temperatures.
• Delia’s Dutch baby Pancake recipe is made for a pizza oven. Like a pizza, the Dutch pancake tastes better with a slightly charred crust.
• There’s no reason you can’t throw a batch of simple chocolate cookies onto a pre-heated baking tray and into your pizza oven. The cookies will be done in no time.

Bear in mind, all of these desserts will cook more quickly in a hot pizza oven!

Why Choose a Dome-Shaped Brick Pizza Oven Kit?

Outdoor brick pizza oven kits contain the oven dome, cooking floor, vent, insulation, door, stovepipe, and mortar. Everything you need to assemble a safe, efficient pizza oven right in your own backyard. Classic Neopolitan dome-shaped pizza ovens have been used for centuries. Dome-shaped ovens are the only ovens that can achieve efficient heat distribution.

There is a huge range of pizza oven kits available. As we’ve demonstrated, you can use your pizza oven to cook much more than pizza. Steak, bread, fish, dessert, even a whole lamb or suckling pig. All you need to decide is who to invite for dinner!

Wood-fired ovens are taking over. Chefs from restaurants across the US are leaving the safety of their convection ovens behind and embracing the way of the caveman. Inspired by the flavor possibilities of wood and flame, these chefs believe cooking with fire makes them more conscious and experimental.

But is there a place for wood-fired ovens outside the top kitchens of the Portland or Austin food scene? We think so! Wood-fired ovens offer a fun, affordable and delicious way to cook in your own backyard. And they’re good for more than just incredibly delicious pizza. Here’s why everyone wants a wood-fired oven and soon you will too!

A Brief History of Wood Fired Ovens

Cooking with a wood-fired oven can’t be described as an innovative fad or trend in the restaurant world. They’ve been around for millennia! The first wood-fired ovens were constructed by the inventive Ancient Greeks. The Ancient Romans followed suit, building beautiful dome-shaped ovens from brick and clay.

The preserved remains of wood-fired ovens dating back to the 6th century BC have been uncovered in Pompeii. The Romans used their ovens to cook meat, fish and bake delicious bread, a precursor to Italy’s greatest gift to the world - pizza!

The wood-fired oven reached Europe around the Middle Ages. Villages often had an outdoor communal oven, where families could gather and bake their bread for the week ahead.

Around the 18th century, wealthier Europeans decided to install ovens in their own homes. Oven design changed and smaller white ovens emerged with a separate firing chamber.

The industrial revolution brought metal ovens into the home and the wood-fired oven became, for most, a thing of the past. In certain places, Italy for example, wood-fired ovens have never been out of fashion. And in Naples, it would be sacrilege to cook a Margherita any other way.

Disenfranchised with fast food and turned off by the froths and foams of Haute cuisine, the future of food might be its past. Thanks to a slow food revolution that started in Italy, traditional cooking methods are making a comeback. And you can’t get much more traditional than a brick oven and a roaring fire.

Wood Fired Ovens Don’t Use Fossil Fuels

There are arguments both for and against wood-fired ovens as an environmentally-friendly cooking method. A study published in 2016 looked at the emissions caused by wood-fired ovens in San Paulo, Brazil. The results weren’t good, with experts claiming smoke from the city’s many pizzerias and steak restaurants was harming the environment.

Smoke pollution is also regulated in certain parts of the US, particularly places that are densely populated. Check if your municipality has any wood-burning restrictions before you purchase a wood-fired oven.

On the other hand, wood-fired ovens do not use fossil fuels, offering a clear benefit in terms of global energy consumption. Our reliance on gas and electric ovens to cook our food contributed to fossil fuel depletion. Cooking food using a heat source that does not rely on gas or electricity is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint.

Wood-Fired Ovens Get Very Hot and Cook Food Quickly

To heat a wood-fired oven, build a fire in the center of the dome and wait for it to reach optimum temperature. We have lots of advice on how to do this efficiently. The optimum temperature for cooking pizza is 700 degrees Fahrenheit, at least 200 degrees hotter than a standard convection oven. In a true dome shaped pizza oven, the oven itself is the heat source, not the fire. The clay, brick or stone the oven is made from absorbs as much heat as it can then transmits that heat back into the dome. As a result, a wood-fired oven can cook a pizza in around 2 minutes.

It takes between 1.5 and 3 hours to heat a wood-fired oven to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the oven reaches this temperature it will stay hot for a long time, unlike a gas or electric oven that cools quickly. This means you can cook multiple dishes or courses using one batch of fuel.

Food Tastes Better Cooked in a Wood-Fired Oven

One major benefit of cooking with a wood-fired oven is taste. The even heat distribution achieved by a dome-shaped oven cooks every surface of your food at the same time.

When you slide a pizza into a hot pizza oven it immediately puffs up. Heat from the bottom of the oven gives the pizza a crispy base. Radiant heat beaming down on the pizza from all angles creates an airy, charred crust and cooks the pizza toppings at the same time. The magic happens in minutes.

A fast cooking time ensures the cheese is melted but not burnt and the tomato sauce is smoky-hot. Vegetable toppings also benefit from a short blast of heat as they will retain the majority of their vitamins and minerals. Yes, pizza can be nutritious too!

It’s Surprisingly Easy and Affordable to Buy Your Own Outdoor Pizza Oven

Wood-fired pizza ovens that can be installed in your own back yard are becoming more affordable and easier to install. Cute miniature versions of the pizza ovens you see in authentic pizzerias are perfect for families.

The smallest residential pizza ovens available can cook one pizza at a time. But remember, it takes less than two minutes to cook a pizza so no one will be waiting for too long!

The largest ovens can cook several pizzas or a whole suckling lamb or pig at a time. Your backyard parties will never be the same again.

You can buy outdoor pizza ovens assembled by master craftsmen, delivered and installed in your own backyard. These ovens are ready for use. Alternatively, you can give yourself a fun DIY project by purchasing an outdoor pizza oven kit. These are generally less expensive than assembled ovens and are fairly straight-forward to put together.

Wood-fired ovens are the only way to cook authentic delicious Italian pizza at home. Everyone else wants one and by now, we hope you do too!

Achieving the perfect wood-fired pizza takes nothing more than a great outdoor pizza oven and a bit of preparation. To ensure your first pizza party goes off without a hitch, we’ve got some advice for newbies and pizza professionals alike. Here’s our take on making the perfect pizza.

Lighting Pizza Ovens Outdoors

Most of us have a pretty good idea of how to start a fire. You need logs, kindling, a firelighter, and a flame. Build yourself a little mound with the quick-burning materials in the middle. Light it up and you’re good to go. But your fire has to heat an entire oven not just char the end of a few marshmallows. There is a better way.

We favor the box method of fire-building. If you have a small pizza oven start with around 6-8 logs. If you have a large pizza oven you’ll need 9-12.

Build a stack by placing 2 or 3 logs in a row left to right, then 2 or 3 on top the opposite way. Continue until you’ve used all your logs. For a larger oven, it’s a good idea to place three logs around the walls of the oven, like a short wall around your stack. Now place a small amount of kindling and a firelighter on top of your stack. This fire will burn top-down and result in a slow-burning, evenly-spread fire that will soon have your oven up to the optimum temperature.

The fire should be in the very center of your oven. If you can’t reach the center of your oven to light the firelighter safely, build the fire on a peel and slide it in once lit.

Top Tip: For a good fire you need good-quality, dry logs. Damp logs will take forever to light and will not burn hot enough to heat your oven properly. Only use logs that are ready to burn (ie have been dried) and store them in a cool, dry place.

Getting Your Pizza Oven to the Right Temperature

Pizza ovens can reach temperatures well beyond standard household ovens. To achieve the perfect pizza with slightly charred toppings, melted cheese, and a puffy, chewy crust, your oven needs to reach 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thanks to the ancient technique of molding the pizza oven in a dome shape, this temperature is easily achievable. The flames from your fire heat the walls of the oven. When the walls can no longer absorb heat, they radiate the surplus back into the dome.

It can take between 1.5 and 3 hours to get your oven to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s worth investing in a laser thermometer to get an accurate reading of the heat inside your oven.

You may need to add more logs to keep the fire in your oven going to reach optimum temperature. But once that temperature has been reached, you can let the fire begin to die down. A properly heated oven will stay hot for hours, enough time to cook a whole batch of delicious pizzas!

Top Tip: The first pizza you cook in your oven will likely be a disaster. Its hard to know exactly how the dough will behave and your oven may be a little too hot or a little too cold. Use a plain piece of dough or pita bread as testers to see whether your oven is at the right temperature.

Making Your Pizza Dough

There’s no denying pizza cooked in a wood fired oven tastes better. And once you’ve made your own pizza dough a few times, you’ll never eat another frozen pizza!

It’s easy to make pizza dough at home and recipes call for only four ingredients.

• Start with 4 cups of stone-milled flour. Something like bread flour works best.
• Add a pinch of salt.
• Take one cup of warm water and dissolve 1 ounce of brewer’s yeast or 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast.
• Scoop a little well in the middle of your bowl of flour and pour in a tablespoon of olive oil.
• Add the water-yeast mixture a little at a time until the flour and water come together in a dough.
• Knead the dough for about ten minutes before placing it in an oiled bowl and covering with a muslin cloth or linen tea towel to rise. It’ll take about two hours.
• Finally split the dough into four balls and leave on a floured surface to rise for another hour.

Preparing Pizza Toppings

How you prepare your pizza dough is very important. Getting a good rise makes the difference between a soggy, heavy pizza base and a light, crisp and airy one. But if you want to be crowned the king or queen of the wood-fired pizza you have to make sure your toppings are on point too.

• Most pizza sauces can be prepared up to a week ahead and frozen for long-term storage. Now you’ve got your outdoor pizza oven installed, you’re going to be making a lot of pizza! Prepare a large batch of pizza sauce (we like this New York-style recipe from Serious Eats) ahead of time.
• A classic Neopolitan Margherita pizza has only three toppings, pizza sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil leaves. Other classic pizza toppings include pepperoni, salami, ham, chicken, peppers, mushrooms, olives, pineapple, and anchovies. When adding toppings to your pizza, the only limit is your imagination!

Top Tip: Don’t overload your pizza with toppings. It’s tempting to get creative and create a brand new flavor concoction but topping-laden pizzas are difficult to cook. If your pizza is especially dense in the middle, you risk burning the crust and leaving the center undercooked.

With your pizza masterpiece carefully assembled, all that remains is to slide it in the oven! Use your peel to push your fire to the back or over to one side of your oven. Slide your pizza in and rotate it every thirty seconds or so, to ensure it cooks evenly. In less than the minutes, your outdoor pizza oven will deliver a mouth-watering wood-fired pizza. Slide out that slice of heaven and enjoy!

Whether you own a cafe, restaurant, bakery or want to break into the street food scene, a commercial pizza oven is a great way to boost your business.

Pizza is one of America’s favorite foods and the demand for authentic, delicious Italian-style pizza is growing. Today’s discerning diners expect every pizza they eat to be better than the one before. The key to a superior pizza is a superior pizza oven.

There are many types of commercial pizza ovens available, wood-fired, convection, deck, and conveyor. Today we’re going to go through a few key questions and help you figure out which commercial pizza oven is the best choice for you.

What Style of Pizza Do You want to Make?

What style of pizza do you intend to serve your customers? Deep-dish, calzone, Neapolitan or New York-style slices? There are many different types of pizza and each one is suited to a different type of oven.

Thicker pizzas are better suited to an ordinary commercial electric convection oven. Convection ovens feature a fan that circulates hot air around the cooking chamber so it reaches all sides of the pizza at the same time.

Convection ovens have racks so you can cook multiple pizzas at the same time. However, pizza cooks relatively slowly in a convection oven. These ovens aren't capable of reaching temperatures high enough to cook authentic Neapolitan style pizza.

If you want to offer a fast, casual dining experience, like New York-style pizzerias, a gas oven with a rotating deck is a good option. These ovens are capable of cooking 100 or so pizzas in an hour. As the deck rotates, you can be sure your all your pizzas will get an even bake.

A wood-fired pizza oven is the only way to achieve the iconic crisp base and bubbly, charred crust of a Neapolitan pizza. You can’t fake the smoky taste achieved when cooking with fire. It takes more work to get a wood-fired oven up to optimum temperature but you can fire several pizzas at once for around 90 seconds each.

How Much Space Do You Have?

The shape and layout of your kitchen have a huge impact on its efficiency. Only a kitchen that runs smoothly can keep up with the demands of a lunch-hour rush. Your oven should work with your kitchen’s layout without causing too much disruption to your kitchen staff’s routine.

If you have a small space available you may be limited to a convection oven. Small convection ovens can sit on top of a counter. If you have a tall but narrow space available, consider a deck oven but ensure you have enough height clearance.

If you have a large space to play with, you can choose between a conveyor or brick pizza oven. Conveyor ovens are usually gas-powered and feature a motorized conveyor belt. Uncooked food goes in one end of the oven and comes out the other cooked.

These ovens don’t reach temperatures as high as brick ovens and cook food more slowly. They also lack versatility. With a conveyor oven set at one temperature, you can only cook one type of dish at a time.

Wood-fired brick ovens are available in a huge range of sizes. The largest brick ovens can reach from floor to ceiling and take up a great deal of space. But brick ovens can reach incredibly high temperatures.

Thanks to their ancient dome-design, brick ovens cook food through radiant heat. Heat is generated by a wood fire but absorbed by the oven itself. Food cooks from all sides at once and different parts of the oven can maintain different temperatures. This means its possible to cook many dishes at the same time.

A few more things to consider regarding your oven’s size and shape:

• Can the floor of your building hold the weight of your oven?
• Are wood-burning ovens allowed in your building?
• If so, can you store wood on site?
• Do you want your oven to be a focal point?
• Do you have the proper ventilation for a wood-burning oven?

How Much Do You Want to Spend?

Convection Ovens

A convection oven is the most affordable choice. You can purchase a commercial convection oven, suitable for cooking pizza, for between $1,000 and $10,000. The larger the oven, the greater the cost. Gas convection ovens are usually cheaper than electric ones but are not as efficient and can only operate at one temperature

Deck Ovens

Deck ovens are a little more expensive than convection ovens. Prices range from around $5,000 to $30,000. Deck ovens have racks and it’s possible to control the temperature in different parts of the oven. This means you can cook multiple dishes at the same time. You can add more racks as your business grows as deck ovens have a long lifespan.

Conveyor Ovens

Conveyor ovens cost around the same as deck ovens. These ovens operate at one temperature and cook food relatively slowly. They also have a lot of moving parts which means they’re prone to mechanical issues.

Brick Ovens

Custom-built brick pizza ovens can be very expensive. The price will depend on the size and the contractor. There are many companies offering custom brick pizza ovens in a range of styles and finishes. All with hefty price tags. But there is an affordable way to make authentic Neapolitan pizza.

Forward-thinking companies now offer wood-fired pizza oven kits for commercial use. These kits are available from as little as $3,100 and can even be fitted into a trailer for a mobile pizza business.

The Benefits of a Wood Fired Pizza Oven Kit

The only way to cook authentic Neapolitan pizza is with a wood-fired oven. Besides supreme taste, there are many benefits to purchasing a wood-fired pizza oven kit.

• The heating element of a brick oven is the oven itself. Once the oven is hot it will remain so for a very long time, saving on fuel.
• Operating a wood-fired oven takes a lot more skill than operating an electric oven. Cooking with fire is an art and your staff will become better, more intuitive chefs as a result!
• Pizza cooks very quickly in a wood-fired oven. You can cook many pizzas in a short span of time.
• Build-it-yourself pizza oven kits are surprisingly affordable. These kits can be built into a trailer that can be turned into a mobile pizza business. A wood-fired pizza oven doesn’t need a power source!

So is the best commercial pizza oven wood-fired or convection? We’ve made our preference clear but the best oven for you is the one that best suits your needs. Shop around, ask a lot of questions and prepare to launch your own successful pizzeria!

Throwing a backyard pizza party has more chance of success than a party of any other food theme. Add the novelty and superior taste of a wood-fired pizza oven into the mix and your status as “best host of the year” is assured. But every good party takes a bit of planning. Here are our tips for throwing a killer backyard party with a wood-fired pizza oven.

Why Throw a Pizza Party?

In homes and restaurants across the nation, people are eating more pizza than ever before. Pizza is truly one of the nation’s favorite foods. Not only because we’re eating more of it, but because the majority of Americans love to eat it!

One in eight people in the US will eat a slice (or two, or eight) of pizza on any given day. Not only that, statistics show that people eating pizza vary little in terms of gender or race. The only thing that seems to have an impact is age. Older people eat less pizza in general. They don’t know what they’re missing!

Unlike BBQ cook-outs or more formal dinners, a pizza party caters to everyone. Vegetarians, vegans, and people with food intolerances rejoice. Every party guest can have a custom pizza that will suit their particular dietary needs. A considerate host is a good host, after all!

Benefits of a Brick Pizza Oven

Are you considering buying a brick pizza oven with backyard pizza parties in mind? The main thing to consider is size. The larger the oven, the more you can cook at one time. Bigger is better but a larger oven will be more expensive and take up more space than a smaller oven.

Here’s what you need to know about choosing the size of your brick pizza oven:

• Small ovens are usually 21 to 31 inches wide (interior width). These ovens can cook one large or two small pizza at a time and are great for baking a loaf or two of bread.
• Medium-sized ovens are between 31 and 39 inches wide and can cook two large pizzas. These ovens can also handle a whole suckling pig or lamb or similar.
• Large pizza ovens are sometimes referred to as commercial ovens. Up to 59 inches wide, these ovens can cook 4 or 5 large pizzas at a time. Perfect for large parties, these ovens are also used in the catering industry.

You also need to consider materials. Most wood-fired pizza ovens are made from brick or clay. These materials are fuel efficient and cost-effective. Stone wood-fired pizza ovens are available but tend to be more costly than clay or brick. Modern pizza ovens made from steel are the cheapest option and will reach optimum temperature more quickly but are not as fuel efficient.

Consider what you intend to cook in your oven and how many people you plan to entertain. Providing your pizza oven had been heated to its optimum temperature, it takes less than three minutes to fully cook a pizza. The Italian government specifies that certified Vera Pizza Napolenta should be cooked in 60 to 90 seconds and not a second more! When entertaining a large number of people, it’s nice to be able to cook multiple pizzas at one time so a medium or large pizza would be best.

Preparing for Your Backyard Pizza Oven Party

So you’ve got your new wood-fired pizza oven in place and you’re ready to party! But, wait. The perfect party requires a bit of planning. Here are a few steps you don’t want to skip.

Practice Cooking in Your Pizza Oven

You wouldn’t test out a new oven on Thanksgiving so don’t make your pizza party the first time you fire up your pizza oven! Starting a fire in your pizza oven and getting it to optimum temperature can take up to three hours depending on the oven’s size. See our guide to starting a fire in your pizza oven to get your process perfected long before your guests arrive.

It’s also a good idea to practice cooking a few pizzas before the big night. The first pizza of the batch is often a dud as you can’t be sure your oven is too hot or too cold until the dough tells you. Make up a batch of pita bread or a plain pizza dough base to test the temperature.

Make Your Dough

Your guests will accept nothing less than wood-fired pizza perfection. To achieve this perfection your dough has to be absolutely faultless. There are a million different recipes out there for wood-fired pizza dough but we particularly like this one from The Spruce Eats. Sticking to pizza baking masters, the Neapolitans advise, this recipe calls for brewer’s yeast, flour, salt and water with an optional teaspoon of olive oil. If you’re making the dough the traditional way it will take three hours to rise. However, if you have a bread machine you can cut that time in half.

Making your pizza dough is the most relaxing and enjoyable part of the whole process. Get messy and enjoy releasing the tension of the day into that pizza dough!

Prepare Toppings, Sides, and Seasonings

You don’t want to be slicing vegetables and grating cheese when your guests arrive. A classic Margherita pizza features nothing more than tomato sauce, buffalo-milk mozzarella and fresh basil. But for a backyard pizza party, it’s nice to offer a variety. The only limit to pizza toppings is your imagination but bear in mind that a heavier pizza takes longer to cook. Too many toppings can create a burnt crust and sloppy undercooked center. Aka pizza suicide.

In my opinion, all a backyard pizza party needs is pizza. However, you might want to prepare a couple of lighter sides like salad and slaw for when your guests have had their fill of the greatest food on earth. Seasonings such as fresh parmesan, chili flakes, and black pepper are good to have handy too.

Consider Pizza Oven Safety

Nothing ruins a party quicker than a guest being rushed to the ER. Wood-fired pizza ovens are not dangerous but whenever you’re lighting fires and cooking outdoors you should always follow safety guidelines.

It’s a nice idea to give your guests a chance to put their own topped pizza into the oven. Doing this requires placing the pizza on a peel, sliding the peel into the oven and giving it a jerk to slide the pizza into the oven. It takes a bit of skill to get this right so keep an eye on the newbies. Always use long-handled pizza oven utensils to rearrange your fire or move your food.

The pizza will be extremely hot when it comes out of the oven. The oven itself will retain heat for hours and the inner surface and opening will be hot to the touch. Keep small children and any vulnerable people away from your wood-fired pizza oven.

That’s our advice on using your wood-fired pizza oven to throw a killer party. All you need to do now is invite your guests!

There is a right way and a wrong way to start a fire. A dropped cigarette in a garbage can = wrong. The carefully planned ignition of arranged logs in a pizza oven outdoors = right!

Getting a good fire going seems like the easiest thing in the world. Anyone can throw a match on a pile of logs. But starting a fire that will burn in a pizza oven and create an even distribution of steady heat requires skill. We know all the secret tricks of the trade to start the perfect pizza oven fire and keep it burning!

Building a Fire the Right Way

When we were kids learning how to build a fire, we learned to start small. Begin with a small amount of kindling and twigs, then gradually add larger bits of timber until your fire is the size you want. But what works for warming your hands and toasting marshmallows on a camping trip, doesn’t necessarily work for a pizza oven.

Experienced pizza oven firestarters know that the bottom-to-top method of fire building is for amateurs. The top-to-bottom method is the only way to go. As recipe writer Genevieve Taylor describes, the best way to start a fire in a pizza oven is, to begin with a game of Jenga.

Start with a few decent-sized pieces of hardwood, around 3-4 inches thick and 15 inches long, and stack them. Stack two pieces one way and two pieces the opposite way, like in Jenga, using sticks of dry kindling for the top layers. Place a firelighter (see more on firelighters below) on the top of the stack and light it. Once the firelighter has caught it will light the kindling underneath and in turn light the hardwood below.

Where you build your fire depends on the type of pizza oven you have. If you can build your fire in the very center of the oven and light it safely, then go ahead and do that. If not, you can build the fire on a peel and slide it into the oven once you’ve got the firelighter going.

Expert Tip: For an efficient fire that will heat your whole pizza oven evenly, try the walled-in technique. Before you light your stack, take three logs and place one flush with each wall of your pizza oven. They should look like a short wall around your stack. Gradually, the burning stack will light the wall of logs creating an intense heat that the walls of the oven will absorb. Using the walled-in technique guarantees an evenly heated oven that stays hot for longer.

How Long Does it Take to Heat a Pizza Oven?

It can take anywhere between half an hour and an hour and a half for your pizza oven to reach its desired temperature. It depends on the size of the oven. Like cooking a pizza, the bigger it is, the longer it takes.

Pizza ovens cook your food using radiant heat. You can monitor the radiant heat present in your pizza oven by looking at the center of the oven dome. After around thirty minutes of your fire releasing smoke, a clear spot will appear at the center of the dome. That clear spot will expand until the whole oven is clear. This happens when the carbon that fills the oven reaches a high enough temperature that it turns from black to clear.

If you need to, add more wood to the sides and back of the oven to help the process along. The aim is to reach a temperature of around 700ºF. Only when the entire dome is clear is your pizza oven ready.

Expert tip: Seasoned pizza oven chefs let the oven rest a little once it reaches optimum temperature. By moving the fire to one side and allowing the oven to cool a little, you lessen the chance of burning your first pizza. Many chefs also use this period to cook simple pita bread or something similar. This gives the chef an idea of how the oven is working and what sort of temperature has been reached.

The Right Firelighter for a Wood Fired Pizza Oven

There are many different types of firelighters. When lighting a fire in a pizza oven, it’s important that you only use non-toxic firelighters. Not only is this a good choice for the environment, but it also ensures you’re not introducing any toxicity to the food you’re cooking in your pizza oven.

Most eco-friendly firelighters are made from a combination of sustainably sourced wood and wool soaked in wax. Some firestarters are made with sawdust although this can affect the taste of your food. Light your fire with a small butane torch if you have one. After all, there’s only so many times you can burn your fingertips with a match!

The Right Wood for a Wood Fired Pizza Oven

Firelighters disintegrate minutes after being lit, so as long as you choose a non-toxic firelighter, you can’t really go wrong. When choosing the wood, we need to be more specific. The fuel you use to heat your pizza oven has a huge impact on how your oven operates and the taste of your food. Here are a few tried-and-tested tips for choosing the right wood for your wood-fired pizza oven:

1. Never use charcoal. Charcoal burns hot and bright but it will not heat your pizza oven. Charcoal does not produce any flames which are one of the key factors for heating the dome of your oven evenly.
2. Never burn water. Green wood is around 50 percent water. Only use wood that has been properly dried out. Collecting your own wood and drying it out is the most cost-effective method, but bear in mind that it takes at least one, but preferably two, summers to dry properly.
3. Never use softwoods. Softwoods like cedar, yew, and redwood burn too quickly to heat your pizza oven. Before your oven is even close to the temperature it needs to be, these low-density woods are always ash. Softwoods are also full of sap and resin that, when burned, create soot in your pizza oven. The soot can turn to creosote which can ignite.
4. Choose hardwoods. Hardwoods like oak, ash or mesquite are dense and will burn long enough to get your pizza oven to that all-important temperature. Different hardwoods will impart different flavors to your food. Hickory is a smoking hardwood that gives meat, like pork and ribs, their chargrilled taste. Walnut wood also has a strong, smoky flavor that goes well with earthy foods like mushrooms and root vegetables. Wood from fruit trees like apple, pear, apricot, and nectarine gives food a subtle and slightly sweet smoky taste.

Now you know how to light your pizza oven outdoors the right way! Practice makes perfect so experiment with different woods and burning times until you know exactly what works best for your pizza oven.

The only way to celebrate a new wood-fired pizza oven is with an awesome backyard party! Before you send out the invitations and put the beer on ice, you have some preparation to take care of.

We have some great tips on how to pull off the perfect pizza party. First, you need to be in full control of your fire and your oven. Next, you need those pizzas prepped and ready for the flames. Finally, you need to know how to fire those pizzas like a pro.

With our help, you can host the pizza party of the year and make it look easy.

Why Host a Wood-Fired Pizza Party?

Communities have gathered around shared ovens for millennia. The earliest wood-fired ovens date back to Ancient Greece, where villagers and townsfolk would work together to bake bread for the week ahead.

Now it’s easier to go to the grocery store. But that doesn’t mean we can’t recreate a wood-fired baking session for the fun of it. Everyone has a BBQ. You’ve got a wood-fired pizza oven!

Gathering around a fire and channeling our inner caveman is all good fun. But your guests are definitely going to want pizza at the end of it. Pizza is one of America’s favorite foods, loved equally across gender, race and class lines.

Since each pizza is customizable, you can be sure to keep all your guests happy. Even those with food intolerances and allergies can be easily catered to with minimum effort. Everyone’s a winner!

Even when your guests have eaten as much pizza as they can, your wood-fired oven still comes in handy. Residual heat from the oven can be used to bake bread, cook potato chips or warm desserts. The oven will stay warm well into the night, keeping the party going even when the temperature drops.

Best Outdoor Pizza Oven Advice

To get the most out of your pizza oven, learn from our mistakes and follow our best advice.

1) Get Your Fire Going Before Guests Arrive

Depending on its size, it can take up to 3 hours to heat your pizza oven. You don’t want to leave chopping logs to size, building your fire or trying to get the thing lit until your guests arrive.

Fire safety is important. You need to give your fire your full attention, so get started a few hours early. We recommend firing your oven at least once before you invite guests for a pizza party. Every oven is different and it's a good idea to get acquainted with yours without an audience!

Ensure you have enough dry, ready-to-burn wood available to build a decent fire and feed it throughout the night. You’ll also need kindling and natural firestarters. For our tried-and-tested fire building technique, see our post on how to start a fire in your pizza oven outdoors.

2) Manage the Temperature of Your Oven

It’s hard to tell when to feed your oven with more wood and when to let it burn down. Dome-shaped pizza ovens offer the best heat distribution. And the more you use your oven the easier it will become to intuit how to heat it efficiently. To cook pizza, your oven needs to reach a temperature of 700 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s easier and quicker to let an oven cool than it is to heat it up.

When hosting a pizza party, we recommend getting your oven up to a decent 800 degrees before guests arrive. That way you can monitor the falling temperature, rather than adding more fuel and stoking the fire.

Use the oven door to increase or decrease the amount of oxygen getting to the fire. By closing the door, you can slow down the burn. An infrared thermometer is a good investment as you can pinpoint the exact temperature inside your oven without making contact.

3) Get Cooking!

You don’t have to wait for your oven to reach the optimum temperature to start cooking. Everything tastes great cooked in a wood-fired oven. To achieve the bubbly chargrilled crust of authentic Italian pizza, you have to cook it at a very high temperature. But many other foods will cook beautifully in your oven as it comes up to pizza-baking temperature.

Guests arrive at pizza parties hungry so offer them wood-fired appetizers. Simple oven trays filled with lightly oiled and seasoned potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, stuffed peppers, and simple vegetable crudites taste amazing when charred in a wood-fired oven. You can also bake simple pita bread and cook potato chips.

Once your oven has reached the perfect 700-degree temperature you can start firing your pizzas. The smallest outdoor pizza ovens cook one pizza at a time while the largest can cook several at once. Depending on the size of your wood-fired oven, it only takes between 90 seconds and three minutes to cook a pizza. Even with a small oven, you can feed a whole party in under an hour!

How to Prepare the Perfect Pizza

Now you know how to get the most out of your pizza oven, we can turn our attention to the pizza itself. Pizzerias churn out hundreds of pizzas a day. Pizza chefs prepare fresh pizza dough, add a splash of pizza sauce and sprinkle on just the right amount of toppings. Into the oven it goes and out comes perfection. It all looks so easy.

These people are professionals! In an attempt to imitate these professionals, we’ve learned a thing or two about preparing the perfect pizza:

Make Your Dough Early. The success of your dough defines the success of your pizza. Don’t buy frozen dough or follow a no-rise recipe. Creating authentic, Italian pizza dough takes a few hours but isn’t labor-intensive. And it’s totally worth it. We like this simple recipe from the NY Times but it only makes two 12 inch pizzas. You’ll need a lot more than that for your party!

Prepare Your Rounds. Even rolling or stretching the pizza dough into rounds takes away from valuable hosting time. Have your rounds ready to go before the party starts by laying them flat on top of each other with a piece of baking parchment between them.

Go Easy on the Toppings. Enthusiastic new pizza chefs make this mistake all the time. You want to create a flavor sensation with your pizza so it's tempting to add a whole host of toppings. But the more toppings you add, the longer it will take the center of your pizza to cook. Too many toppings can lead to a pizza that’s burnt on the edges and soggy in the middle.

Now you know how to handle your new wood-fired pizza oven and prepare the perfect pizzas, your celebration is guaranteed to go off without a hitch. Cheers!

If you own a restaurant, cafe, bakery or mobile kitchen and want to reinvigorate your business, a commercial wood-fired pizza oven may be just the ticket.

Wood-fired pizza is having a moment. Mediocre electric oven cooked pizza simply won’t cut it with today’s diners. Only the most authentic, bubbly-crusted, Italian-style pizza will do. And you don’t need decades of experience in a pizzeria to pull it off!

Pizza is one of the simplest and easily customized dishes on the American menu. Even better, you can cook a pizza in a wood-fired oven in around 90 seconds. Imagine how many pizzas you could sell in a day!

There are many types of commercial pizza oven available. We believe wood-fired is the only way to go and here’s why.

Different Types of Restaurant Pizza Oven

There are Three main types of commercial pizza oven available on the market. Each oven has pros and cons when it comes to cost, performance, and efficiency. Here’s our take on what each of the three main types of pizza oven has to offer:

1) Convection Oven

Most modern kitchens come fitted with some type of convection oven. Conventional ovens have one heat source. Heat usually radiated from one place, either gas-powered flames at the bottom of the oven or an electric heating element. In a convection oven, a fan circulates this heat all around the oven. Convection ovens radiate heat from all directions but these ovens never get especially hot. This makes convection ovens a good choice for keeping energy bills low. However, as a perfectly crisp pizza must be cooked quickly in a hot oven, convection ovens are not recommended.

• Max Temp - around 460 degrees Fahrenheit
• Pizza Cooking Time - Around 10 minutes
• Heat Retention - Poor

2) Conveyor Oven

Conveyor ovens drag food through a hot chamber on a conveyor belt. These ovens come in freestanding and countertop varieties. Large freestanding units cook food using forced air heating while smaller countertop units use radiant heat. Both varieties cook food fairly slowly, which makes them unsuitable for use in busy restaurants or pizzerias.

• Max Temp - around 500 degrees Fahrenheit
• Pizza Cooking Time - 6 to 8 minutes
• Heat Retention - Good

3) Wood-Fired Brick Oven

The history of wood-fired brick ovens goes back to ancient times. Evidence of brick ovens for baking bread and roasting meat can be linked to almost all of earth’s ancient civilizations.

Brick ovens have experienced something of a comeback in recent years. Part of a trend toward traditional cooking styles, restaurants are installing wood-fired ovens to entice new diners.

To cook incredible pizza using the same method Italians have used for centuries, invest in a commercial dome-shaped wood-fired oven. The dome shape of the oven traps the heat generated by the wood-fuelled fire. The heat is absorbed by the bricks and radiated back into the center of the oven. Food bakes rapidly and is infused with the smoky, earthy taste of burning wood.

• Max Temp - Up to 1000 degreed Fahrenheit
• Pizza Cooking Time - 90 seconds to 3 minutes
• Heat retention -- Very good

Commercial Wood-Fired Brick Ovens Offer Superior Flavor

Pizza cooked in a wood-fired pizza oven tastes better than pizza cooked in any other type of oven. The extreme radiant heat generated by a brick pizza oven cooks the pizza from the top and the bottom at the same time.

As soon as the raw pizza dough hits the searing-hot stone base of the oven, it develops a perfectly crisp base. The crust of the pizza puffs up while the toppings are grilled from above. The fire that’s still crackling away inside the oven gives the pizza a smoky flavor that cannot be replicated in a gas or electric oven. No way, no how.

Wood-fired brick ovens have been tried and tested over the course of centuries and there is simply no better way to cook a pizza. But don’t just take our word for it. A Russian physicist living in Rome conducted a scientific analysis of pizza-making. His findings? Yes, wood-fired ovens are absolutely superior to electric ones.

A Commerical Wood-Fired Oven Sets Your Restaurant Apart

Most cities have a number of pizzerias competing for the largest slice of the pizza-eating public. Installing a wood-fired oven in your restaurant sets your business apart from the competition.

A wood-fired oven appeals to everyone. From couples looking for a romantic ambiance and parents looking for somewhere different to take the kids, the novelty of a wood-fired oven appeals to all. You can even install your new oven in such a way that it becomes the focal point of your restaurant.

By installing a wood-fired brick oven in your restaurant you can churn out authentic, Italian-style pizzas all day long. But you can use your new oven for much more than pizza. Wood-fired ovens are a great way to cook all kinds of foods including bread, cakes, desserts, meat, vegetables, and fish. Wood-fired T-bone steak; blackened whole snapper fish; artisanal rye loaf or bundt cake. The only limit to what you can cook in a wood-fired oven is your chef’s ambition.

A Commerical Wood-Fired Pizza Oven is an Affordable Investment

Commercial wood-fired pizza ovens are more affordable than you might think. There is a range of different types and sizes available to suit your budget. You don’t have to spend tens of thousands on a cavernous pizza oven that takes up your entire restaurant.

Many suppliers sell commerical pizza oven kits. The ovens stick faithfully to the traditional Neopolitan design but add modern materials for better efficiency. Commercial pizza oven kits come in pieces or fully-assembled. You can choose what works best for your business and your handyman skill level!

Smaller businesses, like cafes or bakeries, or restaurants that want to tap into the street food market can also go mobile. Mobile pizza ovens come as trailers you can attach to a car or trucks and are heated by wood fire or gas.

Selling pizza and other wood-fired foods on the go can be incredibly lucrative. Night food markets, university campuses, outdoor events, the possibilities are endless when you take your food business on the road.

A commercial wood-fired pizza oven is the only way to go. Add authentic wood-fired pizza to your menu and watch the customers come running!

Getting the best out of your wood-fired pizza oven is a process of trial and error. We’re taught as children that fire is incredibly dangerous. Even a carelessly dropped cigarette could ignite a blaze that will kill us all.

In reality, getting a good fire going, especially in damp conditions, can be a challenge. Once lit, you have to continue building your fire until it heats your oven to optimum temperature. If you can’t reach the optimum temperature you can’t fire a perfect and delicious pizza masterpiece.

Practice makes perfect but no one wants to stay in the amateur leagues for long. Follow these 5 hot tips for working your wood-fired pizza oven and you’ll reach pro status sooner than you think!

1) Go For a Dome-Shaped Pizza Oven Kit

You can buy wood-fired pizza ovens that are barrel-shaped or dome-shaped. Dome-shaped ovens are the only way to go. The first Italian pizza ovens were dome-shaped and been baking superior pizza for centuries.

A perfect dome-shaped oven ensures even heat distribution. This is key if you want to achieve an evenly-baked pizza. A true dome shape will also generate a higher cooking temperature than a barrel-shaped oven. Only ovens with a true dome shape will give your pizza the beautifully puffed-up and charred crust that sets an amazing pizza apart from a mediocre one.

2) Make a Pizza Oven Fire the Right Way

There is a right way and a wrong way to make a fire in your wood-fired pizza oven. We recommend the box method of fire-building. Arrange your logs in a Jenga-like box. Place two or three logs (depending on the size of your oven) in a row then build another row on top, facing the opposite way. Stack two or three layers like this, then place some kindling and a natural firelighter on top.

If you have a large pizza oven it’s also a good idea to place three logs around the stack. Like a short wall that runs around the perimeter of the oven. These logs will catch last and ensure a wide fire that will heat the whole oven.

3) Use the Right Fuel for Your Wood-Fired Pizza Oven

You can’t burn any old wood in your pizza oven. Advice varies on the best type of wood for use in a pizza oven but we recommend ready to burn hardwoods like oak, hickory, mesquite, or wood from fruit trees like apple, pear or apricot.

It’s tempting to use softwood or cheap processed wood like MDF. These woods will burn far too quickly and will produce a lot of smoke, which can coat the inside of your oven in harmful deposits.

Avoid green wood at all costs. Green wood is any wood that has recently been felled. Wood is between 80 and 90% water. Burning green wood creates a lot of steam and smoke that will not heat your pizza oven efficiently. Too much smoke creates creosote build-ups on the inside of your oven that will not only taint your oven baked food but are highly combustible!

Ready to burn wood has already been dried. This will burn hot and long enough to get your pizza oven to optimum temperature.

4) Do Your Pizza Preparation

The key to a baking a premium wood-fired pizza with minimum effort is preparation! Do these four things before you start cooking and you’ll be minutes away from a freshly baked pizza.

Heat Your Oven Early

Depending on the size of your pizza oven it can take up to three hours to reach optimum temperature. If there are environmental issues to contend with, like damp weather, it can take even longer. To ensure your pizza oven is ready to go when you are, light your fire a few hours before you intend to cook. It’s easier to maintain the temperature of your oven than increase it. Once you have your oven up to the right temperature, 700 F for most ovens, you can monitor it and add more fuel when necessary.

Make Your Dough Early

Pizza dough can also take around three hours to rise. A basic Neopolitan recipe calls for flour, yeast, salt, water and an optional teaspoon of olive oil. Creating the dough is simple but the rise takes a bit of care. Here’s a nice crowd-sourced pizza dough recipe. Although this recipe describes cooking the pizza in an oven, the same recipe applies for a wood-fired pizza oven. This recipe works for four large pizzas. Split the dough into 6 for smaller pizzas or to feed more people, double (or even triple!) the measurements.

Prepare the toppings

You don’t want to be preparing a tomato sauce or slicing mozzarella while trying to maintain the temperature of your pizza oven. Get your toppings sliced and diced ahead of time!

Get your utensils ready

You should only ever use long-handled utensils specifically designed for use in wood-fired ovens. Pizza ovens reach incredibly high temperatures. Make sure your utensils are clean and within reach before you put your pizza in the oven.

5) Experiment With Your Wood-Fired Pizza Oven

You can use a wood-fired pizza oven for more than cooking the perfect pizza. Outdoor pizza ovens come in a variety of sizes, both assembled and residential build-it-yourself kits.

The largest residential pizza ovens can accommodate several pizzas at one time. Or you can experiment. Nothing says special occasion like an entire suckling pig, lamb or game animal. A large pizza oven can accommodate a whole animal and will infuse the chosen meat with a smoky, wood-fired taste you can’t get any other way.

It takes minutes to cook a pizza in an oven that has reached optimum temperature. Use that heat to cook a few steaks, roast a whole fish or grill a tray of vegetables. You can also bake bread in your pizza oven, cakes, cookies, and other desserts.

Now you know how to use your wood-fired pizza oven like a pro, the culinary possibilities are endless!

Residential pizza ovens are now as easy to buy and install as garden furniture or a BBQ so we can all cook authentic Neapolitan-style pizza at home. These pizza ovens reach temperatures well above your standard kitchen oven. And it’s this intense heat that gives Italian stone-baked pizza its airy, moist base and crisp, charred crust.

There are dozens of affordable, efficient and beautifully-designed residential pizza ovens on the market. Here are a few questions to help you choose the perfect pizza oven for your home.

1) Do You Want to Cook Pizza Inside or Outside?

The most important question to ask yourself when choosing a pizza oven is “inside or outside?” Do you want to cook delicious pizzas in the comfort of your kitchen or do you want the freedom of cooking with fire in your backyard?

Installing a wood-burning pizza oven in your kitchen means you can use it all year round, even in the dead of winter. But indoor pizza ovens often have to be custom built to fit the space in your home. This makes them an expensive option. You also have to ensure your oven is properly ventilated, another big space stealer. You can go for a gas or electric oven, of course. But where’s the fun in that!

Outdoor pizza ovens are easier to install and can be purchased as modular kits. Providing you’re able to do some basic building work (or know someone who is!) you can build the oven yourself. This cuts out the need for a contractor which will save you a lot of money.

The Best Outdoor Pizza Ovens

The best outdoor pizza ovens are undoubtedly Neapolitan-style brick ovens. These dome-shaped ovens were first introduced by the Ancient Greeks to bake bread. Ancient civilizations recognized the most efficient way to cook food was using a clay or brick oven, heated by a wood fire. The fire heated the dome of the oven to such a high temperature that the oven walls became its own heat source. Using radiant heat, traditional ovens are efficient, retain heat for a long time and can cook a pizza in 90 seconds!

2) What Sort of Fuel Do You Prefer?

Residential pizza ovens are fuelled by electricity, gas or wood. The kind of fuel you choose will affect your oven’s efficiency, design, and impact on the environment. And let’s not forget taste!

An electric pizza oven is a safe choice for indoors. Electric convection ovens feature a fan that circulates hot air around your oven. A good quality electric oven will heat up quickly but does not retain heat once switched off.

Gas ovens can reach cooking temperature even faster than electric ones but again, will not retain heat. Neither gas nor electric ovens have any impact on flavor.

Wood-fired ovens take a long time to heat up but do retain heat. They also offer superior flavor. For a true Italian style pizza with a crisp base and charred crust, there is no alternative to a wood-fired oven.

Wood-fired ovens infuse your food with a smoky taste that cannot be replicated in a gas or electric model. And because these ovens don’t require access to gas or electricity, you can install one anywhere you like!

The Most Environmentally-Friendly Pizza Ovens

Cooking accounts for only 4.5 percent of household energy use in the U.S. But when the aim is to reduce our carbon footprint, every little bit helps.

Wood-burning ovens can have a greater impact on the environment than gas or electric ovens. The issue is the smoke.

A 2016 study conducted in São Paolo, Brazil found that the city’s love of wood-fired pizza and meat was contributing to alarming levels of deforestation and air pollution. However, most modern wood-burning ovens are fitted with particle filters that stop the most harmful emissions polluting the air.

You can also choose to purchase energy-efficient and eco-friendly wood. Wood-burning ovens are fuelled by a renewable energy source.

Both electric and gas ovens rely on fossil fuels. Gas ovens are the most efficient as they provide instant heat, unlike electric ovens that can take a long time to heat up. As a result, the most environmentally-friendly pizza ovens are those that use a combination of gas and wood. These dual fuel source ovens use less wood and create less smoke but still gives the pizza a smoky taste and crisp yet light texture.

3) How Much Space do you Have for a Residential Pizza Oven?

Size and space are two major considerations when choosing a residential pizza oven. The amount of food you intend you cook will determine the size of oven you need.

If you will mostly be cooking for yourself and one other person, the smallest sized oven will suffice. If you have huge backyard pizza parties in mind, the bigger your pizza oven, the better! A residential pizza oven is a long-term investment so consider how your needs might change over the next decade or so.

If you’ve chosen to buy an indoor pizza oven, you need to consider the space you have available. The oven has to fit comfortably with room to move around it and there must be enough space to install a chimney.

If you’ve chosen an outdoor pizza oven, space isn’t as much of an issue. Providing you can easily access your oven from your kitchen and your dining area, you can put an outdoor oven wherever you like! Patios and decks are great for pizza ovens as they offer a solid, flat foundation close to the house.

The Best Small Wood-Fired Pizza Ovens

Pizza baked in a small wood-fired pizza oven will taste far superior to anything baked in a gas or electric equivalent. These small ovens can accommodate one pizza at a time. When you consider it takes only 1.5 to 3 minutes to cook a pizza, that doesn’t seem so bad!

Small wood-fired pizza ovens come in a huge variety of shapes and materials. Stainless steel ovens with a stone floor are popular and often fuelled by a mixture of propane gas and wood. These ovens are largely portable and can be purchased for less than $1,000. This article from Serious Eats outlines three of the best.

For our money, there’s only one style of wood-fired pizza oven worth investing in, a traditional Neapolitan oven. These dome-shaped brick ovens use a design that’s been tried and tested over centuries. Available already-assembled or as oven kits you can build yourself, Neapolitan pizza ovens are as attractive as they are efficient. A small oven may set you back around $1,500 but could last you a lifetime with no maintenance needed.

The perfect residential pizza oven is the one that suits your needs best. Authentic Italian pizza baked at home is only one delivery away!