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!