Build your own Pizza Oven
DIY Pizza Oven in your Garden
Venturing into the world of DIY pizza ovens can be a basic DIY project that takes you beyond your comfort zone and elevates your pizza game. Having your own pizza oven in your garden makes a great talking point and a good reason to invite friends over. Believe me or not - pizza cooked in such an oven tastes much more delicious. If you want to join in with the experience, you can buy complete new pizza ovens, build an oven from scratch or opt for the best of both worlds by incorporating specialist parts into your design. Using purpose made fire bricks and other refractory materials from Vitcas that are designed to withstand high temperatures will result in a more efficient and long lasting oven than using ordinary masonry products. No matter which method you choose, building a pizza oven by yourself will give you satisfaction and will create new opportunities to gather your friends and family around. The secret to achieving the perfect pizza in your DIY pizza oven lies in mastering the cooking time – it's all about finding that sweet spot for that crispy, golden crust. Prepare your own pizza oven and make the perfect pizza for your guests.
Below are the materials you need for building your garden oven for baking pizza.
Materials required to build the best pizza ovens / bread ovens
Vitcas provides all the materials that you might need when building garden wood-fired pizza oven. We also have for sale a Pizza Oven Kit containing the necessary materials to build a fire brick pizza oven of 1 m diameter.
This kit contains:
- 280 fire bricks
- 34 arch bricks
- 5 packs of heatproof screed (100 kg)
- 1 ceramic fibre board
- 2 ceramic fibre blanket 50mm (2x3.66m = aprox. 7m long)
- 1 ceramic fibre adhesive 310ml
- 1 wire mesh
- 3 packs of outdoor oven cement (60 kg)
You will also need some additional materials and tools such as:
- sharp sand (general purpose sand)
- builders sand (for detailed work)
- pieces of wood / foam / polystyrene for shaping the arch
- spade
- trowel for bricklaying
- concrete, breeze block, house bricks, railway sleepers or wooden pallet for the base
- trammel for shaping the doom
So let's start!
Pizza oven tutorial - building wood burning oven from scratch
The base - solid foundations for wood fired pizza oven
Building a DIY pizza oven requires attention to detail, from carefully placing each small brick to making sure you have the right mix of refractory mortar. Depending on the location, you may need to start by laying a concrete foundation. Supports for your outdoor pizza oven can be made of concrete, breeze blocks, house bricks, or even old railway sleepers, but they must be strong and level, as the oven is going to be heavy. If you are using bricks or breeze blocks connect them together using cement. To ensure the stability of your DIY pizza oven, apply landscape adhesive generously to the small pieces of refractory mortar as you slowly build the oven's structure. In case of using wood elements screw the pieces together. Remember: plinth must be steady and withstand the weight of the whole wood-fired oven. An interesting solution is to prepare some free space in ovens plinth for storing logs. Thanks to this you always will have fuel to your pizza oven close at hand. On top of this, a first layer of bricks make up the oven base. The bricks should be laid flush to each other on a thin layer of sand a few inches thick to make the smooth and level surface. Prepared in that way the oven floor will serve as a place for cooking pizza and baking your food.
Tip: Make the oven floor from the best bricks you got. Choose those that do not have cavities and are perfectly even.
Materials required to build best pizza / bread oven
Vitcas provides all the materials that you might need when building garden wood-fired brick oven. We also have for sale a Pizza Oven Kit containing the necessary materials to build a diy pizza oven of approx. 1 m diameter.
The Arch
For the arch which forms the opening of the oven, it is possible to buy a ready made one, or specially tapered firebricks which make the job easier than using rectangular bricks for the less experienced DIYer. Always use outdoor oven cement between the bricks or heat proof screed for larger gaps.
TIP: To make a perfect arch use the semi-circular sand mould and on it put brick by brick. You can use wooden or polystyrene template as well.
The Brick Dome
The simplest shape for the main dome of pizza ovens is a circle. This can be constructed by placing rings of bricks one on top of another without any need for support. If you want a barrel shaped dome, you need to construct a supporting structure for the brickwork or clay. This can be as straightforward as building up wet sand dome (something like sand castle) to create what will be the interior, or making a wooden support. For gaps larger than 10mm; such as the tapered gaps between bricks, Heatproof Screed should be used. Where the thickness is less than 10mm the Outdoor Oven Cement should be used.
TIP: Fine solutions is to use special trammel as well - You can see how it works on this animation https://youtu.be/L8n-zkEhOyc
Once the cement has set, remove the remaining sand.
If you want to have a chimney in your construction, you should leave a hole between doom and an arch - you can protect it with a round bucket the size of a chimney - or form a flue from clay.
The Door and Flue
To bake bread, put the loaf in the oven when the heat is residual and the fire has died down. Bread bakes in the residual heat of the oven after the fire has died. To keep the heat in, it is vital that the garden oven has a door. Wood fired ovens designed specifically for pizzas do not always have a door, because pizzas cook so quickly. But without sealing the oven and minimizing the heat loss, you will not cook bread properly. If you already have a garden wood-fired oven, you can buy cast iron doors separately or have one made to fit, and create a tight seal with fire rope and an appropriate adhesive. Insert a stainless steel chimney flue into the previously prepared hole.
It is important that the flue has an internal damper so you can close off the flue and keep the heat in.
Insulation
How do you make your pizza oven more efficient? Good insulation is the key to obtaining an even temperature throughout the pizza oven's cooking area and not wasting heat to the outside. This starts at the top of the supported structure. You can buy ready made insulation concrete plinths or insulate under the base of the oven with a ceramic fibre board. Insulate the dome further with a layer of exterior cladding. This can be a thermal blanket made of ceramic fibre attached with a suitable adhesive, then chicken wire or another similar material to create a key for a thin (~10mm) covering of outdoor oven cement.
Now you know how to build your oven. What's next? Learn how to heat up a pizza oven properly, how long it takes and how to keep your oven clean. The following article will help with this: How To Use A Wood Fire Pizza Oven The Right Way.
Wood fired oven - pre-made or DIY pizza ovens?
With this small guide, the building process of garden wood fired ovens is not as hard as it looks. If you want to enjoy cooking and baking in the fresh air you definitely should try to make your own garden pizza oven.
Fire up your DIY pizza oven, ignite a small fire using small sticks to gradually fill the oven with the hot embers needed for that authentic, wood-fired flavor.
If you have no patience, check our premade outdoor wood-burning pizza ovens designed for domestic and commercial use- ready to use and easy to assemble. The article The BEST Pizza Ovens: A review will help you decide which outdoor pizza oven will be the best for you.