Has anyone built a brick outdoor pizza oven?

You can buy brick almost anywhere. Friend of mine has one. When the fire is right, it will cook a pizza in 90 seconds.

I will ask him about cost.

First recommendation - Find a set of plans - google and look at the several you will find. There is a ton of information there you will need before you even start.

You will need a base to support the weight and a foundation to support that base. That can be brick or other material over a poured concrete slab. If not brick then something that will handle the heat coming through the bottom. Brick over a concrete foundation is the best option.

You need structural brick and fire brick. They are different. Structural brick gives you the nice look you want on something that will be there for years after you build it. Fire brick (and the mortar) are different. They look very plain (tan), but are constructed to stand the intense heat of a fire.

You need structure to support the brick (opening, roof, etc.) as you lay them. Think removable wood/plywood framing. You build that structure knowing that you must be able to disassemble and remove it after you build the oven.

Find plans and follow them. The oven must breath - take in oxygen and vent the combustion gases. It must draw properly. Also you will spend a lot of money and you want it to look nice when finished and ten years later. This is something you will build and then grow tired of, so you want it to at least look good after you lose your desire to cook in it.

By the way, coking in it is a hassle. It is high temperature cooking and it doesn't work for many foods. It will be good for pizza and a few other things. You need to REALLY like wood fired pizza to consider building one of these.


Cost? close to a thousand dollars if you hire someone. Maybe half to 2/3 that if you do it yourself. If you do it, you better be able to lay bricks so that they look right/classy when you are finished.

Good luck. I have seen them that are works of brick layer's art. I have also seen them that haven't been used in over a year "because we never knew how hard they are to clean up afterwards and you have to keep all that wood around."

i know 2 people who have them. both can count on 1 hand how many times they've used them

got one, 5K with plans and let a brick guy do it. It is AWESOME!

post some pics of it.

I'd say if you want someone to build it for you it will cost quite a bit more than a thousand bucks. I kicked around the idea this spring of doing an oven but we are probably going to remodel our entire backyard next spring so I am waiting on that (at least).

I priced materials, and I'm thinking it was going to be a shade under a thousand bucks in materials alone, and that was for a small-ish oven (I want to say 32-36").

My advice is to go to fornobravo.com and read the forums like crazy for a few weeks. I'd also read their ebook from cover to cover, which goes through the build and gives you lots of information that you didn't even know you'd need. It takes a couple of hours to get through the book and it will give you a great breakdown of what's really involved. It's $3 on their site and worth every penny.

I think I've decided to forgo the traditional fire brick dome and go with a homemade refractory cast mix. Essentially I'm making concrete that has a higher heat tolerance than traditional concrete. It's WAY cheaper than fire brick, and although it doesn't have the heat retention properties that the brick will have I think it will work for my purposes (if you're just using it for pizzas like I will be then I think the traditional design is overkill to the nth degree). There's a lot of info on the forums about castable refractory if you're interested in that or don't hesitate to ask any other questions. Although I haven't built one yet I have done a lot of research on them.


Oh, and for right now I use a 14" cast iron pizza pan on my gas grill, and although it's not wood fired it does make a dang good pie and gets hot enough that if you don't dial it in right you can completely char the bottom of a pizza in less than a minute.

If you're interested in building your own refractory cement oven, Brickwood Ovens sells foam forms. You can cast the oven in place...BO also sells refractory cement and all the supplies you might need, or provides a shopping list of stuff to buy locally. LINK

RE: cleaning, frequency of use....local climate is definitely a factor. Unless you're building your oven under a decent sized shelter/roof & have dry storage for your firewood, constant rain will limit the oven's use. A wet oven can be fired, but it is terribly inefficient, as much of the heat will go toward boiling off the damp. So think about rain management before you site your oven.

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I've even seen videos of folks who did the DIY mixture around an exercise ball instead of actually making casts for the dome.

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i just used a pile of wet sand as the form. Cheap and easy to sculpt into a a dome w/a caternary curve using a piece of corplast as a jig.

I am eagerly awaiting slightly cooler weather so I can play with the dang oven.

Bet that thing would cook a decent prime rib too?

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I can't imagine wanting to cook pizza enough to have one of these.

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Firing an oven (esp a brick oven) for just pizza is silly. An oven is just a big heat storage mechanism--you cook pizza with a live fire & maximum heat, fairly soon after you start the fire.

When you're done with the pizzas, but are still managing a live fire, you can roast meats, veggies, seafood. Quit feeding the fire & let it die out, sweep out the ash, & then you load some bread dough, plug up the door, and bake. As the oven temp continues to gradually fall, you remove the bread and switch over to longer, slower dishes like beans, soups or stews. Finally, you can use the lingering heat to dehydrate/dry various things.

Richard Miscovich's book From the Wood Fired Oven is a must read for anyone w/a WFO. LINK