Technology in the garden - pizza ovens

Sales of pizza ovens has soared.  They make crisp restaurant-quality pizza and are ideal for family meals, where everyone can get involved in the prep.  Home pizza ovens also make an excellent focal and gathering point for entertaining in the garden.

These ovens reach temperatures well above what a home oven can reach to cook delicious pizzas with a crispy base in anything from five minutes to a minute and a half.  Traditional pizza ovens are wood or charcoal-fired which give pizzas that traditional smoky flavour, but they’re harder to control the temperature and take longer for the oven cavity to heat up – often an hour or so.

When considering the size of oven you choose, as well as your available space, bear in mind that bigger ovens accommodate more pizzas but smaller ovens will take as little as 10 minutes to heat up if you’re using gas.  A temperature gauge is handy, as you’ll always know when you’re ready to cook.

You can buy large or compact, stand-alone or portable units from brands such as DeliVita, Ooni, Woody, Gozney who make gas or wood burning ovens.  Jamie Oliver has a range of traditional dome-shaped wood-fired ovens– they’re stylish but suitable for especially keen chefs as they’re expensive and heavy and need more patience to light and build up to the right temperature.  Those with enough space may want to opt for a built-in oven, installed by an outdoor kitchens company with a work surface on one or both sides of the oven to use for stretching dough and assembling pizzas – and a place for your beer or glass of wine!

Whatever you opt for, eating fresh pizza with friends, in your garden will certainly put the joy into cooking.