GRAB A SLICE OF THE ACTION!
BBQs? Oh do keep up — now it’s all about pizza ovens, says Max Davidson
FIRST it was barbecues. If you had a garden without one, you were failing at our national sport — keeping up with the Joneses.
Now it is pizza ovens. No pizza oven, no street cred with the neighbours. Any old fool can go on Deliveroo and order a pepperoni pizza on a crusty base with extra onions and olives.
A real man — and pizza ovens, like barbecues before them, are quintessentially boys’ toys — cooks his own.
Tim Reeves, director of Blistering ( blisteringwoodfiredovens.co.uk), based in East Sussex, was one of the first to spot a potential new trend. He built his first pizza oven for his father-inlaw 20 years ago, at a time when he was also importing wood-fired terracotta ovens from Portugal.
The ovens looked great, but were heavy to transport, so the company now specialises in light, easyto-assemble ovens which make the perfect centrepiece for a pizza party.
‘Once you have mastered them, they are also great for cooking more sophisticated dishes using meat and fish,’ says Reeves. ‘The wood gives the food a flavour you simply cannot get in a gas or electric oven. Most of our products are for outdoor use, although we also sell ovens you can install in your kitchen. I have one in my home and get hours of pleasure from it.’
He adds: ‘A wood-fired oven in your garden is a real statement piece. Blokes love having the chance to show off their cooking skills to family and friends, throwing on another log here, adding herbs there.’
But it’s not just macho men who want a slice of the action. One of Reeves’s satisfied customers is Cold Feet star Fay Ripley.
‘Since our wood-fired oven has taken pride of place in our garden, it has brought together friends and family and made a special event out of the simplest of pleasures,’ says Ripley. Blistering ovens range in price from £1,349 to £2,297, which put them towards the top of the market.
As with barbecues, you can go for the cheap and cheerful or you can wow your friends with something that makes your suburban garden look like an Italian beach restaurant.
Another option, which more and more people seem to be going for, is to convert an outhouse into a large separate space where you can have pizza parties around the oven in all weathers.
Some of the basic ovens can be assembled in minutes, such as the £799 Primo 60 from the Stone Bake Oven Company ( co.uk). It can only cook one pizza at a time, but it looks the part. The company’s £2,149 Vento 100, meanwhile, can cook four pizzas at once and is fronted with a decorative archway which would not be out of place in an Italian basilica. For a different look try the Morsoe Forno Outdoor Oven ( morsoe.com, £999) or the lightweight £199 Ooni 3 Outdoor Oven ( johnlewis.com), complete with a shiny metal funnel with a hint of Space Age chic, which combines value for money with versatility. The burner can run off wood and charcoal as well as gas and pellets and, when the oven temperature hits its peak of 500C, can turn out a 16in pizza every 60 seconds. Good going when the children are ravenous. How easy are wood-fired ovens to operate? Well, they call for more patience than a conventional cooker. After filling up the oven with kindling and firewood, it will take up to 45 minutes to come up to temperature. It is probably too early to call this a Trend with a capital T, but as David Beckham has got in on the act, that can only be a matter of time. Any parent who has helped children make their own pizzas in a conventional oven indoors knows what a great family bonding exercise it can be. The wood-fired pizza oven in the garden opens up a whole new world of possibility.