Our step-by-step instructions on how to build a pizza oven in your own back garden using items from your local DIY shop or, better still, picked up for free.
In 2008 Simon Brookes attended a Build and Bake course at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage HQ in Devon, where he learned how to cook in a wood-fired oven and how to build one. “I came home and thought, ‘I’m going to build my own pizza oven, ’” recalls Simon. “I’m not practical; I can do basic DIY, but construction is out of my comfort zone. If I can do it anyone can.”
While building his pizza oven Simon started a blog about the project and the food he was cooking in the oven. Soon, would-be oven builders got in touch from all over the world, sharing photos of their ovens and swapping tips. Eventually he put all his experience into an e-book called How to Build a Traditional Wood-fired Clay Pizza Oven.
Wood Fired Pizza Dough
Simon’s project hasn’t been a mere flash in the pan. “It’s replaced our barbecue, ” he says. “A clay oven takes an hour to get up to temperature, but once it does, you’re cooking pizza in 60 seconds, with a crisp base and a fantastic smoky flavour.”
Wood-fired ovens cook at very high temperatures – around 400°C. Domestic ovens can’t get that hot. They’re not just for pizzas, though. Once you sweep out the embers and let it cool a little, the oven’s perfect for slow-roasting. “I’ve cooked joints overnight at around 130°C, ” says Simon.
Far from being a new-fangled invention, clay ovens are thousands of years old. The ancient Egyptians used clay ovens and examples have been unearthed in Roman Pompeii that would still work today if cleaned out and fired up. Ovens like these were built in communal areas and shared by families. By Medieval times, the ovens had become bigger and were used to bake bread for entire villages. Many Italian homes had wood-fired ovens inside up until the middle of the 20th century.
Homemade Neapolitan Pizza
First, decide where to site your oven. Unlike a barbecue, you can’t move a pizza oven around the garden once it’s built. Choose an area with plenty of space around it – somewhere in full sunlight is good.
This is the foundation of your oven, so it needs to be solid. You can build the plinth frame out of bricks, breeze blocks or wooden sleepers. Clear the ground and dig a shallow trench 120cm x 120cm square. If you build the frame from bricks, or breeze blocks, use cement. If you’re using wood, screw the pieces together. You’re after a solid, square box approximately 1m high and 120cm square.
Put a layer of rubble and stones in the centre (1a), then add a layer of sand and glass bottles. These will act as a heat sink, warming up, then radiating heat back up through the oven. Finally, top with a layer of smooth, solid bricks (1b) to form the oven floor. Bear in mind this is the surface you’ll cook on, so the bricks need to fit snugly together.
Ooni Pizza Dough Recipe (for Pizza Ovens!)
Make a mound of damp sand to form the clay around. You’ll need about 120kg sand. Centre it on the plinth you’ve already built and gradually construct the dome up like a giant sand castle. It needs to be 80cm in diameter at the bottom and 40-45cm high. Keep checking on it from above to make sure it’s round. When it’s finished, cover with wet newspaper to stop it drying out while you puddle the clay (see photo).
Roll handfuls of the puddled clay/sand mix into 20cm long, 10cm thick sausage shapes, then build them up in circles around the sand dome, starting from the base (leave the newspaper on), until the dome is completely covered. Work the clay lengths into each other, then smooth the outside with your hands. The layer should be about 7-10cm thick. Leave the clay to dry for 4 hours.
Using a kitchen knife, cut out the entrance to your oven. It needs to be big enough to fit a roasting tray through it, but small enough to keep the heat in – about 30cm wide by 20cm high. Once you’ve cut the entrance, scoop out the sand inside (you can reuse it). Let the dome dry overnight. The next morning, light a small fire inside to help dry out the clay further.
How To Build A Wood Fired Pizza Oven
Build an arch to fit around the entrance using bricks and more sand/clay mix as mortar and to create the angle for the arch. Secure the arch to the clay dome with more clay mix. Next, cut a hole in the roof of the dome near where the arch joins the dome and build a clay collar to hold the chimney. You can use a plant pot as a chimney, buy one, or build up rings of clay to make one (as in the photo).
Make 4 litres of slip (a mixture of clay and water with the consistency of cream). Stir in 14 litres/6kg wood shavings until well mixed. Slap the insulation layer onto the clay dome, then leave to dry for 2 hours.
This is the same as the first oven layer, just slightly larger. Mix the clay and sand together by puddling. Make sausage-shape bricks and press firmly together to cover the insulation layer until 7-10cm thick all over. Smooth the surface as in step 3. Once the finished oven has had a chance to dry out for a day or two (a week would be even better), clean out any remaining sand or debris… And you’re ready to fire it up!
Ovana Portable Pizza Oven
Cooking Obviously you need wood, and proper dried hardwood is best. “Light a pile of newspaper and small sticks of soft wood in the entrance under the chimney, ” says Simon. Slowly build the fire by adding pieces of hardwood such as oak then, once it’s going, move it towards the back of the oven – not too quickly, though, or it may go out. “Once it’s roaring, add just enough wood to keep it ticking over, ” says Simon.There is nothing more rewarding than baking your own pizza in a wood-fired oven, especially if you are making a classic Neapolitan pizza. Those lovely charred ‘tiger’ spots dotted all over a perfectly puffed up pizza crust are pure food heaven. Simplicity is all about the quality of ingredients, so make sure you use some quality extra virgin olive oil, freshly picked basil leaves, authentic San Marzano tinned plum tomatoes and fresh fior di latte cheese.
“Our Fuego wood oven has transformed our restaurant! As a piece of kit, it is extremely versatile and controllable, allowing us to roast all of our meats and vegetables in the wood burning oven as well as using it as a charcoal grill during service. The flavour of everything coming out of the Fuego clay pizza oven is incredible due to the amazing smoky, charred tones added to the smell and taste of everything that’s cooked in it. It is not expensive to run as all the kiln-dried wood we use heats the wood fired pizza oven pretty quickly and it retains its temperature really well, only needing to add logs to the fire a few times over the course of service.”
“We wanted a traditional wood oven that ticked lots of boxes, for us it had to be made of brick for the authentic feel, have amazing functionality and great quality. Our Fuego clay pizza oven ticks them all. Our pizza nights are such a fantastic feature for the guests that stay in our holiday cottages and it’s a great way of bringing friends and family together for making those special memories. Highly recommended”
Outdoor Combo Fireplace And Pizza Oven
“The traditional methods used within its construction and the unrivalled ability to retain heat have thoroughly impressed us. It has been a welcome addition to our BBQ and live music events. We cannot recommend the Fuego brand enough and it has been extremely popular with our chefs and customers alike.”The function of a masonry oven is to trap and radiate heat from a fire, built inside the oven. The design of a pizza oven is heat-efficient, allowing the use of stored heat and coals for long bakes instead of requiring a live fire at all times. Smoke is vented through the front of the oven by means of a chimney, built above the oven door. This oven is built with fire-resistant materials. Similar ovens, designed for bread-making, are generally quite heavily built to store several hours’ worth of heat after completely burning a load of wood, while ovens designed for pizza or other live-fire cooking techniques can have a thinner construction.
TOP TOOLS Tape measure, pencil, cordless screwdriver and Philip’s attachment, hand saw or jigsaw, level, rubber mallet, mason’s chisel, brick trowel, brick jointer, 2-pound hammer, sponge, bucket
1. First, you need to construct the frame over which you will lay the bricks for your pizza oven. You need to cut three ribs out of the shutter-board according to the dimensions (Fig A). Space the ribs equally along the
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