Having your own pizza oven brings you countless benefits. Anyone who has their own pizza oven confirms that this is one of the best decisions they made. So, if you are a lover of delicious pizzas and other meals straight from the oven, but you don’t have one yet – build it! It may seem difficult for someone who never built a thing in their life, but with our pizza oven tutorial, you will manage this without any hassle! How to build your own pizza oven? Read the text and see for yourself!
Why is it worth having your own fire brick pizza oven?
A DIY pizza oven is a great thing for several reasons. Having your outdoor pizza oven is a good pretext for cooking pizza (which you surely love) more often. You can prepare much more than pizza! You can cook bread, different types of meat and fish, roasted vegetables, and even something sweet such as cinnamon rolls.
You can spend more quality time with family and friends or even organise garden parties. People love such parties with good company and delicious food! Meals taken straight from the oven look, taste, and smell gorgeous. What’s more, thanks to quick cooking in an oven that quickly heats up to high temperatures, food doesn’t lose its precious nutrients. As you can see, having your own outdoor oven is really beneficial!
Wood-fired oven building process in stages
Be prepared for the fact that building your own wood-fired pizza oven properly is a multi-stage process. You won’t build an oven in one day, sometimes you will have to wait for a few moments for everything to dry out. In this section, we briefly and succinctly explain how to build your oven in stages.
Determine where do you want your oven to be situated
Determining the future oven location is crucial for safety and convenience of use. A brick pizza oven near trees and bushes poses a risk of fire. The most reasonable option is building an oven at least a few metres away from greenery. It will reduce the fire hazard to the minimum!
Decide what type and design of an oven you need
Before you start building, you need to specify the type, design, shape, and size of your dream oven and be sure about all of that. There are wood fired, gas, and coal outdoor pizza ovens. Define your needs and preferences. Think about which option is the most encouraging, aesthetically interesting, functional and beneficial for you. Make measurements. A bigger oven comfortably fits a few pizzas at once, but on the other hand, it takes longer to heat-up. Set priorities. You can make your checklist of what is important to you. Don’t forget to set a budget!
Equip yourself with heat-resistant materials
The next step is going to the store in order to purchase necessary stuff. You can do online shopping instead. Regardless of the chosen method of shopping, your goal is to find and buy heat-resistant materials without which you won’t be able to build your oven. What we mean by potentially needed things are:
- an outdoor pizza oven kit,
- fire bricks,
- arch bricks,
- ceramic fibre board,
- heatproof screed,
- ceramic fibre blankets
- ceramic fibre adhesive,
- outdoor oven cements, wire mesh.
Let’s get the building started
With a good plan and the required materials, you can start laying the first block. The base of the oven can be composed of bricks, breeze blocks or concrete blocks. The base has to be strong – its task is to support the weight of the oven. If you use bricks, make sure to lay the first block at the foundation’s centre. You should test space, just to make sure that your base’s blocks fit into the space you have selected.
Cut blocks
During the process of building your perfect oven, you might need to cut the blocks in accordance with the design specifications. For this purpose, use a speed square or an angle grinder. Split the blocks using a chisel.
Make sure that the first layer is even
To get a solid base, work precisely and don’t forget to make sure that the first layer of your ideal oven is perfectly even. If it is, the next layers will more likely also be even. Then, continue to the next step – applying two lines of landscape block adhesive at the midpoint of each block. Thanks to this method, the adhesive won’t gust out over the sides and your outdoor oven will not topple.
Set the capstone and lay the oven floor
The next step is all about placing the capstone, which will be your DIY pizza oven’s base. Build as long as you need, to a desired height. Then, apply adhesive at the top and set the capstone evenly. After that, you can smoothly move to the next stage, which is laying the brick oven floor. In practice, it means putting the bricks on the base (capstone). You will need a bit of the refractory mortar made of sand, cement, calcium aluminate, and fireclay. Use it in small amounts to join fire bricks, and then let everything dry for about 2 days.
Create a mould that allows you to build a dome
Just like in the headline – the next step is to create a mould, thanks to which building a dome will be possible. Draw the dome’s shape on the plywood and cut it with a jigsaw. You need 2 pieces of plywood, so do it twice. Then, attach them with screws and cut – make sure the curve matches. The next part is applying thick layers of mortar. Cut bricks if necessary. Remember that it is important to leave a gap (at the dome’s top) for the chimney, without which your ideal oven couldn’t have been made. The mortar requires time to fully dry out, so let it get completely dry for 3 days.
Remove the mould and clean your wood-fired pizza oven (and surroundings)
One of the last things you need to do is to get rid of the previously used mould. You also need to remove remaining sand and screws that are around your oven. Clean everything! The surface has to be smooth. Make sure that the oven floor is not dirty. To clean the whole oven, use a damp cloth. Also, scrape debris away. When you are 100% sure that the entire oven is perfectly cleaned, you can start using it! We wish you a pleasant and fruitful use!
DIY pizza oven build – Summary
Building a pizza oven can be fun. It is worth spending a few days on building and then enjoying tasty and delicious pizzas (and not only pizzas!) for the next several years. The building process consists of a few stages including finding the best location for your oven, buying necessary materials, laying the first block, setting the capstone, laying the floor, checking if everything is even, and so on. With our full guide, you will do it seamlessly and quickly. We have no doubts about it!