Everybody loves pizzas, especially the pizzas taken right from the pizza oven. Pizzas are perfect for everyone, regardless of age. Pizza is a great choice for literally any occasion – you can eat it on a date, at birthday parties, and during office meetings.
You can eat this Italian meal while watching a film or in your own garden, when enjoying your leisure time. You should know that pizza tastes the best taken right from YOUR OWN backyard pizza oven. Cooking pizza can give you a lot of joy. How to build a pizza oven with bricks on your own? Read this article to find out!
Why is it worth building your own pizza oven in your garden?
There are many reasons for building your own pizza oven. First of all, with your own oven in your backyard, you can prepare delicious pizzas. Try preparing Margherita, Napoletana, Quattro formaggi, Caprese, Capricciosa and many other kinds of pizza. Let yourself experiment! Regardless of the type of pizza, pizza dough cooked quickly in high temperatures always tastes the best!
The possibility of preparing delicious meals (not only pizzas)
Not only that, you can prepare much more than brick oven pizza. We use the phrase “pizza oven” in this article, but it doesn’t mean that preparing different meals is not allowed! You can prepare different kinds of meat in various ways.
Cook vegetables, bake bread, and prepare something sweet, such as cinnamon rolls. You will love the taste of meals taken right from an outdoor pizza oven. Cooking with a wood-fired pizza oven will become a pure pleasure for you!
Organising garden meetings with family and friends
We cannot fail to mention the fact that having your DIY pizza oven is an ideal opportunity to invite your closest ones to garden meetings full of delicious meals. Such events are always filled with a good atmosphere and a lot of laughter. Who wouldn’t want to relax in such a charming garden with such a versatile oven and good company?
Building a pizza oven is EASY!
It’s worth mentioning that building your own pizza oven is not as challenging and tedious as it may seem. It is actually quite easy, as long as you follow the instructions from this text. Even a layman can carry it out without much hassle and trouble.
How to build your own wood-fired pizza oven from bricks step by step?
The process of building your wood-fired oven consists of several stages. You won’t be able to build anything without the right materials. The same applies to the location of your oven – it should be well-thought-out. Then, building the oven’s base is another important step, as the base must be strong. Let us present to you all the stages, one after another.
Buy materials required to build your pizza oven
Equip yourself with the best available heat-resistant materials. You will need concrete blocks, firebricks, outdoor oven cement, concrete slab, railway sleepers, bricks, heatproof screed, ceramic fibre boards, ceramic fibre blankets, one oven wire, and arch fire bricks.
Nowadays, there are ready pizza oven kits that can maximally facilitate building your own pizza oven. Such a pizza oven kit is filled with products necessary for building pizza ovens. We strongly recommend making use of this option.
Choose the best location for your pizza oven from bricks
If you’re wondering which location would be the best for your pizza oven, we suggest not choosing the place near trees. This will reduce the fire risk to a minimum. A much better choice is an empty spot in the middle of your garden or somewhere near some wall. Build a little shed keeping the oven dry on rainy days – it will be more than enough.
Create the base of your oven
After choosing the right location for the oven, it’s time for creating the base of the oven. The base of your pizza oven has to be solid and durable to withstand the weight of the oven. Fireproof ceramic fibre board which can withstand temperatures up to 1260 °C can insulate the base of the oven pretty well. We recommend using it to increase the oven productivity.
To create the rectangular base of the oven, you can use bricks. You can connect them with the use of heat-resistant cement-like material. It will be not only practical, but also stylish. Most importantly, the base created this way will be clean and neat. Remember to leave an opening in the front in order to store and protect split wood for the fires.
Then, form a thick concrete slab and put it on top of the base. Make use of regular bag mix concrete and fill the form. Don’t forget to lay a flat fire brick on top of the created slab for the cooking surface.
Build the dome
Once you have completed the cooking base, then you ought to build the form of the dome. You can choose one of the two easy ways to do it. You can use a bricklaying robot – a combination of a robotic arm and gripper, a conveyor belt, and a concrete pump. The second solution is using sand. Creating a sand dome is a really reasonable idea.
You can feel like a child building a sand castle. Just keep creating the oven dome until your desired shape is obtained. Remember to create an oven floor from the best bricks you have. The next step is building the mortar and brick around it. After getting near the top, you can add a metal vent stack or a clay and mortar. Let it dry!
Make an entrance
The entrance should be big enough to let the baking sheet inside the oven. It should be easy to put the baking inside the oven and take out every now and then, whenever it suits you. On the other hand, the entrance cannot be too big because you don’t want the heat to “escape”.
The optimal size of the entrance is 30 cm long and 20 cm high. You are free to create an entrance that suits metal or cast iron doors that you can find in shops. The entrance can be created by using arch bricks. Another solution is buying a precast doorway arch and then incorporating that into the structure.
Build the insulation layer
Render the outside smooth of the oven with more heatproof screed. Then use at least 25 mm thick ceramic fibre blanket to cover the outside of the dome. The next step is to build the insulation layer, which can be painted with a masonry paint. If you want to, you can “decorate” your oven by tiling the outside of it. You are the one who decides!
Your brick oven is almost ready!
Your own pizza oven is almost finished! At this point you need to learn how to properly use your oven. That’s why you need to fire the oven a few times in order to learn how it works. You ought to start the fire (a big fire!) in the central part of the oven.
Then put the wood on it. We recommend using beech. Increase the airflow to the fire if you want to get the oven even hotter. In turn, if you would like to maintain the current temperature, you need to reduce the airflow and then close the damper.
How to build a pizza oven – summary
Wood-fired ovens are definitely worth building. They allow you to cook delicious pizzas. They make baking bread in high temperatures possible. They bring so many benefits that it is just impossible to mention them all in one article.
The most important thing you should remember from this text is the fact that building brick ovens on your own is accomplishable. It’s only a matter of following our easy instructions. It just takes a few steps! Find out for yourself by trying to build your perfect pizza oven on your own!
