How to Build Your Own Pizza Oven

There is no question that using a quality pizza oven is the finest method to cook wonderful pizza!

Unfortunately, it isn’t simply a personal perspective. The puffy, bubbling crust and slightly scorched leopard-spotted base that characterize well-cooked Neapolitan style pizza are the consequence of a highly precise cooking environment.

Although the cost of a decent pizza oven has decreased in recent years due to smart light-weight designs from companies such as Ooni, purchasing a conventional brick oven can set you back.

The good news is that you can construct your own pizza oven with some basic DIY skills and a little effort.

Building your own pizza oven

400°C (far over the temperature of your home oven), hold that heat via design and thermal insulation, and circulate the heat about by air convection.Pizza ovens, at their most basic, perform three things. They reach temperatures of approximately 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

The good news is that, although a pizza oven is required for outstanding pizza, it does not have to be an expensive purchase.

You can build a basic DIY pizza oven for as little as $100 and some elbow grease, and we’ll show you how in simple, easy-to-follow stages today.

Decide on the shape and type of the pizza oven

The first step in building a DIY pizza oven is to choose a design.

A DIY pizza oven comes in two basic designs: the simple brick square and the somewhat more sophisticated and conventional domed oven.

Before you get too excited about the prospect of constructing a dome, there is an easy method to accomplish it. You will, however, need an exercise ball, which we will discuss later.

Each form has a few advantages and disadvantages that we will discuss briefly:

A square oven

A square oven is your best choice if you want to get a pizza oven up and running in the time it takes you to go down your local construction materials dealers.

This oven, made of bricks and pavers, can be rapidly erected and dismantled, making it a fantastic, temporary installation that can be taken on the road with you to campgrounds, cookouts, or even to a friend’s home.

While it is easier to build and more portable, the square oven will not work as well as the dome oven and, for obvious reasons, will not be as appealing to look at.

A dome oven 

DIY domed ovens are often composed of a combination of vermiculite or perlite and concrete formed around a wooden rig, resembling the more classic style of an Italian pizza oven. When the concrete mix has cured, the wooden rig is removed.

Pizza has been baked in a domed oven since its inception, and there’s a solid reason for it. The strong walls and tiny firebox effectively trap heat to maintain a high temperature, the dome reflects heat back to the top of the pizza, and the front entrance and chimney create air convection.

The domed shape provides superior cooking performance than the brick oven, but it is a considerably longer and more complicated procedure to build.

Curing the oven may take up to five to seven weeks, and the finished product isn’t exactly portable. A domed design, on the other hand, is an excellent alternative for a permanent low-cost outdoor pizza oven that you can build yourself.

Things to consider before you start

Once you’ve decided on the kind of oven you want to construct, there are a few more aspects to consider before you begin.

Space and time

Making a domed oven out of perlite or vermiculite requires a pretty big covered or indoor workspace. The oven will also need to rest for five to seven weeks while the concrete mixture hardens.

Starting the oven before it is completely cured, or exposing it to too much moisture or severe temperatures, might cause the oven to break, destroying all of your hard work.

So, if you don’t have access to that type of room for extended periods of time, a basic brick oven would suffice.

DIY ability

If you can stack bricks one on top of the other, you have all the abilities necessary to construct a brick DIY pizza oven. Making a domed oven is a significant step up in terms of ability, equipment, time, and effort.

Assume you’re not completely sure in your capacity to accomplish things like build a wooden structure to establish the shape or mix and layer concrete. In such scenario, you may be better off starting with the simpler brick oven and then progressing to the more sophisticated domed oven later.

Tools and equipment

You’ll need basic woodworking equipment and the skill to cut simple shapes from plywood to create the more sophisticated domed oven. Nothing too extreme.

You’ll also need a few popular construction materials:

White or grey portland cement

The principal bonding agent utilized in the building of the domed oven is cement. White or grey portland cement is more widely accessible at hardware shops, construction supply stores, and on Amazon.

White cement has been stripped of its iron, manganese, and chromium oxide, giving it a paler and significantly finer finish. However, there aren’t many structural changes between the two.

Perlite or Vermiculite

Perlite is a kind of amorphous volcanic glass that is often used in building and agriculture. Vermiculite is a hydrous phyllosilicate mineral with many of the same characteristics and applications as calcite. Both are easily accessible in the same areas that cement is, and both may be used to construct the domed oven.

The fundamental difference between perlite and vermiculite is that perlite is more costly and produces a more solid structure than vermiculite, which is less expensive. Using perlite will not improve the performance of your domed oven, but it will make it more robust.

Constructing a DIY pizza oven

We’ll lead you through the basic and straightforward steps to building both designs based on your competence.timeframeYou’ve decided which one is best for your area.

Method 1: The perlite or vermiculite domed oven

Let’s begin our DIY pizza oven building adventures with the more challenging domed oven.

Tools & Materials:

• Simple woodworking tools including a jigsaw
• Screws and casters for the trolley
• Gloves
• A Mixing bucket for the cement
• Plywood and 2 x 4s.
• A bag of white or grey cement
• A bag of fine perlite or vermiculite
• A bag of coarse perlite or vermiculite
• A 60cm inflatable fit or Swiss ball
• Industrial plastic wrap
• Flexible plastic sheeting
• Silicone sealant
• An empty 20 oz. soda bottle
• 60mm stip Corex/Corflute
• Vesuvius refractory mortar
• A stainless steel chimney flue

Step one: Creating the base

Perlite or Vermiculite mixture will suffice. First, take a measurement around the bottom third of your fit ball. This is the size of the hole that must be cut in a piece of plywood.The first stage in making your domed oven is to construct the shape that your cement will be placed in.

The plywood sheet should be at least 12 inches wider than the ball to accommodate the cement walls, and at least 36 inches longer at the front to accommodate the arch.

To lift the base off the floor, add four 12-inch lengths of 2 x 4 to the bottom.

Fill your fit ball with air and place it in the circular hole you just made. Make sure the ball’s inflating point is facing the floor.

Step two: Creating the arch

The semi-circle aperture at the front of your pizza oven is known as the arch. To build it, cut a circle of plywood with a diameter two-thirds the height of the dome generated by the part of the fit ball over the base.

Make a duplicate of this circle and store it for later use in building the door.

Cut the plywood circle in half and secure it with three 10-inch 2 x 4 pieces, two at the flat bottom and one slightly below the arch’s peak.

The outside shell is made of cement.Then, cut a circle of plywood about 4 inches larger than the one you previously used to make the arch. That should be cut in half and screwed to one end of your arch. This will develop a lip, resulting in a hard-edged opening in your Perlite.

Make your plastic sheet a little longer and broader than your arch. Bend the sheet over the arch so that it fills the gap between the two smaller half circles and butts up against the bigger half circle in front.

Nail it in place and cut the sheet to be the same width as the arch (it should sit flush to the foundation) and approximately an inch longer. Seat your arch flush with the fit ball dome and secure it with a piece of offcut plywood flush with its front.

Finally, in the front of the arch, use the silicone to fill the space between the plastic sheet and the bigger plywood half circle.

Step three: Adding the chimney

First, locate an empty 20-ounce drink bottle. Fill the bottle with water to keep its form, then wrap it with a plastic sheet cut to the same length.

Make a plywood portion the same width as your plastic-wrapped bottle and at least the length of your arch. To fit the bottle and keep it upright, cut a half-circle at the short end. Glue the bottle into position.

By the other short end of the bottle, you may make a bottle combination. This should make an inverted L-shape that secures your bottle chimney without interfering with your cement placement.Connect another strip of plywood to the plywood at the front of your arch.

Step four: Building the shell 

To make the outside walls of your oven, use 5 parts vermiculite or perlite (3 parts coarse, 2 parts fine), 1 part cement, and 2 parts water.

Wear your gloves since this combination might be toxic.

Stir the ingredients until it is completely blended.

Wrap industrial plastic wrap over the whole shape. This is a critical stage.

Cover the whole shape you just created with your hands, right up to the lip at the front of the arch. Begin from the bottom and work your way up.

20 mm. The thicker the walls must be to keep the oven steady as it grows in size.Maintain a constant minimum thickness of for the layer.78 inch

As previously said, this mixture will now need five to seven weeks to cure properly before it can be burned.

Step five: Making the trolley

Making the trolley is the simplest component of this project. Make a basic, solid square frame out of 2 x 4s that is somewhat bigger than the concrete covered form you have created and approximately waist height.

Add casters to one end and a piece of plywood to the other.

Step six: Creating the floor

To make the floor for your oven, cut a piece of plywood 1-inch bigger than the width and length of your oven.

Line the outside edges of the piece of plywood with corflute to create a mold for your floor.Using nails and a stip of 60mm Corex

Fill the mold with 5-parts coarse vermiculite, 1-part cement, and 2-parts water.

Allow at least 6-8 weeks for this to dry.

Step Seven: Removing the form

When your cement dome is completely dry, deflate the fit ball and remove the dome away from its base (this will need many pairs of hands).

You should be able to rapidly flip the dome and remove all of the wooden elements of the form since the plastic wrap served as a lubricant. Remember to remove all of the plastic wrap as well.

Step Eight: Combining the dome and floor and chimney

When the floor is completely dry, place the dome on top and fill the gap with Vesuvius refractory mortar.

Seal the chimney hole within the dome with wooden blocks and cardboard. This will hold the flue in place and prevent mortar from soaking through. Install the flue and fill the surrounding area with Vesuvius.

Before lighting your first fire, allow the Vesuvius to completely dry.

Step Nine: Pizza time

After a few short test fires to ensure the integrity of your dome, you’ll be ready to start cooking pizza in a wood-fired oven you built yourself!

Method 2: Simple brick pizza oven

In contrast to the domed oven, the brick oven is simple to construct and may be completed in an afternoon, ready to cook a pizza for supper.

Tools & Materials:

• 47 stone bricks
• Two concrete paving slabs as broad as three bricks and as narrow as two bricks. These should also be the same thickness as your bricks.
• A spirit level
• A bag of gravel
• An infrared thermometer
• A pizza stone

Step one – Leveling the base

Once you’ve chosen a suitable location for a fire, level it using a spirit level and gravel.

Step two – Building the oven

Make an open-ended three-sided square (a U-shape) on the flat ground with three bricks on each side. Layer the bricks, remembering to alternate placement, until you have four levels. Then place the first pavement slab.

Build three more levels of bricks on top, but this time don’t vary the placement. To make a primitive chimney, offset the three bricks at the far rear by approximately 2 inches.

Place your final paving slab on top.

Step three – Pizza 

Thats it. All done!

If you’re preparing many pies, place the paving slab on top to keep them warm.Light a fire in the space under the first paver. When your handy infrared thermometer reaches about 750F, place your pizza and pizza stone on top of that paving slab.

Wrapping it up

So there you have it, two different methods to build your own DIY pizza oven. One that may be completed in as little as 30 minutes and another that takes between five and seven weeks.

Both of these ovens will produce considerably superior pizza than your home oven and are a fraction of the price of a professional pizza oven.

Once you’ve constructed your oven, make sure to read our guide to various things to cook in a wood pizza oven for some inspiration.

Have you built one of the above-mentioned DIY pizza ovens? How did they help you? Please share your thoughts in the comments box below!