What Do You Need To Know About Building An Outdoor Pizza Oven
Building an outdoor pizza oven is a great way to enjoy fresh, homemade pizza. Here are a few things to keep in mind when youre planning to build your outdoor pizza oven:
1. Location is critical When choosing a spot for your outdoor pizza oven, ensure its close enough to your kitchen so you can easily transport ingredients and pizzas. Its also important to consider things like wind direction and sun exposure when deciding on the perfect location.
2. The suitable materials matter For the best results, use fire brick or refractory brick to build the walls and floor of your outdoor pizza oven. Clay or ceramic tiles can also be used but may crack under high temperatures.
3. Insulation is critical A suitable insulation material is essential for keeping your outdoor pizza oven at the right temperature. Ceramic fiber blankets or vermiculite are both great options.
4. Make sure the door seals tightly An airtight seal on your outdoor pizza oven door is essential for maintaining the correct cooking temperature. Gaps or cracks around the door can let in too much oxygen, which can cause fires.
5. Ventilation is important Proper ventilation is essential for preventing smoke and excess heat from building up inside your outdoor pizza oven. Make sure theres a way for air to circulate by adding a chimney or vent at the top of the stove.
Traditional Wood Fired Pizza Oven By Thegreeneyedgirl
This is similar to our last oven plan, but it is quite a bit smaller. It should still be big enough for full-sized pizzas and would look very nice in an outdoor kitchen. It is only moderately-expensive, depending on how much materials cost in your area.
It is very permanent, so dont plan on moving it after you have built it.
The Pizza Oven Handbook: Builders Guide
Would you like to construct your own backyard woodfired brick pizza oven? Its not as tough as you may imagine, and with the information in this book, its absolutely feasible. Every stage of the project is laid out for you, and they walk you through it step by step. From planning to materials to cooking and beyond, they have you covered.
It is absolutely possible for YOU to build an oven like the one seen on the cover photo and serve your family and friends the most amazing pizza and restaurant-quality wood-fired food in your very own house with just a basic level of DIY abilities.
Imagine sliding the first large homemade pizza off the paddle and into the oven, where it will cook in the tremendous heat in less than a minute or two. Remove it from the oven, which will now smell like an Italian restaurant to everyone who has gathered around it. Cut the sizzling pizza with the pizza cutter like an expert, and tell everyone to dig in! Are you prepared to be the talk of the town?
DIY pizza ovens, also known as wood-fired ovens, have been increasingly popular in recent years and continue to do so.
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Continuing With Doorway And Chimney
Build an arch over the doorway using half face bricks over the formwork.
Begin building up the chimney behind the arch. The actual cross sectional area of the chimney flue is only the size of one brick. It was a bit tricky as the first course of the chimney cantilevered off the doorway walls and required some temporary support.
The taller the chimney, the better the draw so build as high as you can reach or afford!
We completed the front wall of the barrel, cutting bricks as required to fit the arch.
Continuing The Oven Walls
Build the inner skin of the oven walls with face brick. A regular face brick is fired at about 1200°C and should easily withstand the heat of the oven – refractory bricks are not necessary. We used a soldier course which is equivalent to three stretcher courses. Make the joints between bricks as small as possible to minimise the amount of cement exposed to the direct heat and reduce the amount of cement in the mortar mixture by half .
Plot out the curve of the barrel vault on a piece of hardboard on the ground . Lay out the bricks in a curve with the fire-facing edge of the bricks touching. Butt joints are used so that cement does not crumble in the heat of the fire and fall into the oven.
The height of the oven should not be more than about 500 mm at the apex of the arch. If the roof of the oven is too high, the oven will take too long to heat up and will lose heat too quickly.
Build the back wall of the oven, cutting bricks as necessary to suit the arch.
Note:Since this particular oven was built against a double brick retaining wall, we only built a single skin on the back of the oven. For a free-standing oven, a double skin wall is necessary to ensure sufficient thermal mass to retain the heat of the oven.
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Build The Front Arch Form
You will create the sides of the arch by mortaring together two stacks of two bricks. Place those double-stacked bricks about 18 inches apart to create the two side walls of the front arch.
Next, build a form for the arch. Set one of the 18-inch by 18-inch scrap boards on-edge across those stacks. With the carpenter’s pencil, draw an arch that extends from the inner side of one wall to the inner side of the other wall. Remove, then lay the second board underneath. Cut out both arches at the same time with the jigsaw.
How Do Pizza Ovens Work
Wood-fired pizza is no gimmick or mere nostalgic throwback. The wood-fired oven’s small masonry interior exponentially cranks up the heat to temperatures that far surpass anything found in your kitchen oven.
One secret of pizza dough cooked to chewy perfection is an extremely hot bake for short periods: often ranging from 750 to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit for little more than a minute or two. The other secret, of course, is the rich, savory taste that the wood smoke imparts. It’s a taste that no kitchen oven can match.
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Assemble The Pizza Oven
Refer to the manufacturers instructions for a complete and correct installation of the your oven. Our oven came in several pieces with all the materials needed to put it together. The following are installation instructions as per our ovens manufacturer:
1. First do a dry installation of the unit, including the arch. Center the oven on the slab making an outline of the oven with pencil or chalk. Remove the oven elements.
2. Open the bucket of refractory grout. Save the water on top of it by pouring it into another container. Transfer the grout into a larger container for easy mixing . Slowly add the liquid until the grout is the consistency of creamy peanut butter. There will be water left over, save it so that you can pour it back over the remaining grout before you store it.
3. All the bottom elements are installed with the smooth side up and should be level because this is your cooking surface. Start with the small rectangular floor element in front of the oven. Put three individual globs of grout on the underside of each tile, set and tap the piece level. If the tile is not level, then pull it up and add more grout, tapping the tile until level. Install the other tiles in the same manner. Let the tiles sit for an hour before continuing. This will allow the tiles firm up thus preventing any accidental shifting. Return the remaining grout to its bucket, adding the extra water that you saved on top, replace the lid and keep in a cool, dry place.
Choosing The Right Kit
Aesthetic considerationsQuestions to ask yourself before starting this project should also include those about what you want your homemade pizza oven to look like when its finished. Depending on where youd like to put your oven, whether or not youd like to add artistic touches in the form of paints, stains, or tiles, and how large it should be, your decision on what the oven should look like can change.
The easiest method is to begin with an outdoor pizza oven kit, as DIY network points out. Fortunately, theres no shortage of DIY pizza oven kits available in varying sizes, dome shapes, and support for varying kinds of masonry that can be used to build the roof and foundation of the oven.
As an example, the CBO-750 pizza oven kit comes with everything you need to complete the oven. This includes the Insulating Board, Insulating Blanket, Anchor Plate, and Mortar as shown below.
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Recycled Outdoor Brick Oven From Permaculture
This outdoor brick oven is made from recycled bricks so that it retains the permaculture design feel. The design also used some recycled cinder blocks and hardcore rubble. If you have left over materials from a previous project, then this guide can show you how to use them in the creation of your own outdoor brick oven.
Best Starter Natural Gas Outdoor Pizza Oven
After reading through the listings Youll notice that these pizza ovens have a wide price range!
If youre just getting into the hobby You might not want to drop a couple grand right away.
Lucky for you, we have a recommendation for beginners!
Its the Solo Stove Pi pizza oven.
Of course, it has a beginner-friendly gas burner But its also equipped for wood!
So if you want to experiment with wood as your confidence grows The option is there.
Additionally, the Solo Stove is made with excellent materials compared to other entry-level options. The 304 stainless steel construction will endure well outdoors.
You will pay a bit more than some of the other budget options But the lifetime warranty on the Solo Stove Pi makes it worth the cost!
But what if youre a veteran pizza maker?
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Build The Sidewalls For The Base Mold
With the circular saw, rip another piece of MDF wood into strips that are 2 3/4 inches wide and 36 inches long. Attach these sidewalls to the sides of the concrete mold bottom with the 1 5/8-inch drywall screws. Inject the silicone to all 90-degree angles in the mold and smooth down with your finger. After the caulk has cured, coat the mold with the release agent.
Diy Pizza Oven Stone And Brick Work
Elizabeth Heath for Family Handyman
Now the fun starts. Your pizza ovens facade is entirely up to your imagination and masonry skills.
Many DIYers are content to cover their oven dome with refractory cement and stucco and leave it at that. But you can get more creative and build a flat, domed or gabled roof on top of your oven.
Face the oven with brick or a combination of brick and stone, using an interplay of the two materials to create an Old World look. If youve designed a large enough base, consider adding a hand-built barbecue grill next to the oven.
Some tips to keep in mind as you design your pizza oven facade:
- You only need refractory mortar and firebricks for the dome and floor of the oven. Elsewhere, you can use standard bricks and mortar.
- To create a house around your pizza oven dome, build it with concrete blocks, clad in brick and stone.
- Dont forget the chimney! Leave space for the chimney and be sure to attach and seal it before you start the masonry on that section.
- If your roof design creates a space between the oven dome and facade, fill it with lightweight, nonflammable vermiculite, which youll find in the garden section of home improvement centers. For a flat-roof design, you can cover the vermiculite with butcher paper before pouring on concrete for the roof.
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Choose A Pizza Oven Insert Or Build A Dome
Traditional pizza ovens are dome-, igloo- or airplane hangar-shaped forms heated by wood fire. Theyre capable of reaching and maintaining the extremely high temperatures needed to quickly cook thin, crispy Neapolitan-style pizzas. For your DIY pizza oven, you can buy a ready-made insert or build your own. The option you choose depends on your budget and your DIY chops.
Here are some choices to consider:
Ready-made inserts. A ready-made insert takes the guesswork out of building an airtight dome that wont lose heat. Masonry pizza oven kits usually come with detailed instructions for constructing a base and installing the oven, and often include a materials list. The downside? Theyre expensive. Even the smallest pizza oven insert adds more than $2,000 to your budget.
Build with a dummy insert. Theres a reason it takes years for stonemasons to learn to build flawless arches and vaults its hard to do! One shortcut is to buy a ready-made dummy form, around which you build your oven vault with firebricks and refractory mortar. When the mortar is set, just slide out the styrofoam form and behold your masonry vault.
Outdoor Pizza Oven From Howtospecialist
If you intend to build a pizza oven from scratch, you will need a wet saw to cut the bricks down to size. You will also need at least two dry weekends because you will have to leave the mortar to dry before you can complete the rest of the plan. If youre up for the challenge, this outdoor pizza oven from HowToSpecialist will stand as a monument to your achievements, as it is part of a full outdoor kitchen area complete with its own shelter as well.
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Best Outdoor Gas Pizza Oven Overall
If youre looking to jump into a restaurant-quality pizza oven The best outdoor natural gas pizza oven is from Alfa!
Whether you choose the Nano or the Brio Both will bring you a true taste of Italy.
It goes beyond Alfas top-notch materials.
Their professional grade ovens are designed for peak performance from every angle!
In particular, there are three aspects of all Alfa outdoor pizza ovens worth showcasing.
First, its the HeatKeeper Firebrick.
These firebricks provide superior radiant heat compared to lava or ceramic pizza stones.
Theres also the aforementioned DoubleDown Ceramic Superwool®.
The more insulation there is, the better your pizza oven will maintain heat. And with double the heat resistance of regular rock wool Alfa pizza ovens stay plenty hot between bakes.
Finally, Alfa has their Full Circulation Flue System®.
Rather than just letting hot air escape the flue uninhibited Alfas flue system harnesses this heat!
It gets recirculated through the oven once more before exiting the flue.
This further keeps your oven piping hot at all times.
If youre ready to take the next step in your pizza making journey Theres no better option than Alfa gas pizza ovens!
But no matter what oven you choose Youll need the perfect place to put it!
How To Build An Outdoor Pizza Oven
Lee has over two decades of hands-on experience remodeling, fixing, and improving homes, and has been providing home improvement advice for over 13 years.
Deane Biermeier is an expert contractor with nearly 30 years of experience in all types of home repair, maintenance, and remodeling. He is a certified lead carpenter and also holds a certification from the EPA. Deane is a member of The Spruce’s Home Improvement Review Board.
Richard Drury / Getty Images
- Working Time: 2 – 3 days
- Total Time: 1 wk
- Skill Level: Intermediate
- Estimated Cost: $300 to $400
Once you build your own outdoor pizza oven, you’ll be able to enjoy the combined pleasures of pizza, outdoors, and a wood fire for a unique experience that you’ll love to share with family and friends. Your yard will become nothing less than a social mecca. After all, who can resist the allure of quick-baked pizza with the unmistakable flavors of oak, maple, ash, beech, or birch wood smoke? Let an outdoor pizza oven complement your backyard patio or add one to your outdoor kitchen.
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Diy Cheap Exercise Ball Pizza Oven
If youre wondering what to use as a mold to create a perfectly spherical dome for your pizza oven, an exercise ball will do the job just right!
Watch this tutorial to find out how to use your exercise ball to make a pizza oven and make one for yourself. A short disclaimer the Youtuber hasnt provided any follow-along plan!
An Outdoor Pizza Oven Is A Major Undertaking That Results In A Beautiful Backyard Showpiece Here Are The Basics Of A Diy Outdoor Pizza Oven
Elizabeth Heath for Family Handyman
For many homeowners, a stone and masonry pizza oven is the pride and joy of a fabulous outdoor dining and entertainment area. An outdoor pizza oven clad in brick and natural stone has a sturdy, authentic feel to it, and can be designed to look rustic or modern. Like a barbecue grill or an outdoor kitchen, a permanently installed outdoor pizza oven can be a year-round gathering place for friends and family.
If you pay a skilled stonemason to build a stone and masonry oven, youll likely wind up with a beautiful finished product. But it could cost tens of thousands of dollars, depending on where you live and how elaborate the design. Building a DIY stone and brick oven is a challenging, incredibly rewarding job, but one we recommend only if youve got advanced masonry skills.
Here are some of the major steps, materials and tools required for a DIY outdoor pizza oven.
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Pro tip: If your design has an arch, youll need to construct an arch-shaped support, which youll remove when the arch is built and the mortar is set. The support can be wood and plywood, particleboard or hardboard. Or you can get a welder or blacksmith to make you a metal one.
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