Why ?

Well, one day I flew from around Venice, Italy to California for a short visit and ended up never going home. Everything around me was exciting and amazing exactly as I learnt watching 90210 as a kid except pizza. The artisanal movement was not as strong and widespread as today and everyone was simply acquainted to mediocre pizza. We could not live with that.

I studied a lot and I figured out how to prepare the perfect dough, a respectable sauce and even my own mozzarella!

The next problem to solve was cooking temperature: I followed some of the available tricks and tips from the interwebs: from the perforated backing sheet on the oven floor to the double pizza stone, passing through the hacked cleaning cycle…

Good and great results came, but it was never pizza like back home!

I started lurking on fornobravo.com intensively, only to find out that owning a woodfired oven was proibitive: even diy projects were expensive, gargantuan and permanent – did I mention I was renting a beach cottage ?

How ?

I organized my ideas around the concept that a perfect pizza is cooked in a combination of radiation, convection and heat transfer and wondered if I could recreate these conditions is a minify version of a pompeii oven.

The community at fornobravo.com marked it as a big disappointment on my way and failure waiting to happen so I got motivated and starting sketching some ideas.

I also received fundamental tips from some good hearted experts and I was able to correct both my plans and my project in progress.

Had I not moved to an apartment I would have built an optimized version of the first oven and in this guide I will try to give some suggestion to improve my steps.

The Basics

You desire a device that, given proper fuel, will reach and retain an unconventional (for a home kitchen) temperature adequate to make a perfect batch pizzas. Simple, right?

Disclaimer

This project is not a joke. Before you start, be advised that this is a simple but labor intense build and that the use of hazardous materials, power tools, heavy components and extremely high temperatures here illustrated can lead to serious injuries and death. The author renounce liability for any injury or loss of any type that results from the use of this guide. Search out expert advice if you are unsure about any possible hazard for your person, your property and anything in the range of the oven. Thank you.

Disclaimer 2

Be aware of the consequence of owning a pizza oven: your artisanal excellence will constantly drive hordes of old and new friends (and friends of friends) to your backyard. Be prepared to make piles of pies and see them vanish in seconds. Build yourself a complementary tip jar. Be nice to your neighbors.

Long Live Pizza!