Getting Started
If you choose to go the buy route there are many good options out there. When I last researched the two brands I had set my eyes on after researching and researching was the ooni and the rocbox. The original Ooni’s using pellets were quite fiddly, I used my brothers and often the pellets would get stuck in the shoot, the burn would be less then perfect and you would get a sooty tasting pizza from the smoke . I haven’t used the roccbox but heard good things about them I also know Ooni has changed a lot about there new designs and now have really great working gas options. I would opt for a gas option for consistency sake. The Ooni and Roccbox both have multifuel options.
After using the Ooni I decided I needed a bigger oven and I also wanted to use the reserved heat for other baking and cooking options like bread or slow roasting meat. Although someday I may purchase an Ooni or Roccbox to take camping. Nothing compares to this kind of pizza and its a fun ritual making your own and experimenting with toppings sauce and dough. One of my favorite ways of entertaining is to throw a pizza party.
If you go the build route there is an incredible community of pizza oven builders and resources that can be found by visiting https://community.fornobravo.com/ prepare to dive deep. There’s so much to learn from building techniques, design, sourcing material, insulating etc. The great thing about the community is there are many people willing to help and share what they learned. If your not a big DIY person but a small diy person you can opt for a kit that many provide including insulation, door, chimney and cast shell. You might think it would be cheaper going the build route, that’s possible if you can find some used fire brick but its going to take lots and lots of work. Kits are generally smaller but you will have a quicker simpler build and have a good expectation on performance.
My Build
You can see my build by visiting the fornobravo community forum
I found there was someone in salt lake who built a beautiful oven and covered the outside using hand cut copper shingles. I visited him to see how he built and was blown away by the craftsmanship.
I scoured our local classifieds and really lucked out by finding used heavy duty refractory brick from a kiln that had been torn down.
Wood Fired Pizza Dough Recipe
I first started using Kenji’s dough recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/the-pizza-lab-three-doughs-to-know
But found after experimentation that my favorite is a simple recipe involving only 4 ingredients. The key here is the hydration level of water to flour, the flour type and a long and slow rise in the fridge. 2-3 days is perfect. You can pull it off the night before but its just not as good.
Bread flour I go with 70-73% hydration, its wet and tough to handle but I sacrifice the ease of working the dough for the better texture. For 00 flour you only need 60% hydration.
Ingredients
00 Flour or Bread Flour 1000 gms
Water 600 gms for 00, 720 gms for Bread Flour
Sea Salt 25 gms
Active Dry Yeast 6 gms
Steps
- Get a kitchen scale, and zero out the weight of the bowl. Add ingredients one at a time then zero out for next ingredient. Cooking by weight is efficient and easy! I put my kitchen aid mixing bowl on the scale so I don’t have to dirty extra dishes.
- Mix it all up with your kitchen aid and/or by hand. My kitchen aid only takes it so far then I use the flap and slap technique to kneed the wet dough. I like to develop the gluten here and make sure the dough is nice and smooth. Let the dough rise for 1 hour covered with plastic wrap.
- After 1 hour I use my scale to divide up the dough balls equally I usually go for around 350gms each but it depends on the total weight and the size you want your pizza to be.
- Shape the dough into round balls, I cup my hands and alternate the ball back and forth pulling the dough down to create surface tension.
- Spray some olive oil or vegetable oil into some plastic containers. (I use costco greek yogurt containers) 1 container per ball. Place dough ball into container and refrigerate ideally for 2-3 days.
- Remove an hour before cooking, reshape into ball as needed and place on a cookie sheet covered with plastic wrap until forming into pizza. Make sure to flour the ball well before shaping.