wood-fired ovens + outdoor kitchens + gardens

living and cooking outside

amrit row

wood-fired oven 2012

As a leading designer, supplier and installer of wood-fired ovens and

accessories, it may come as no surprise that we have extensive experience of cooking with fire. It’s basic stuff: heat, smoke and brick, the ancient alchemical combination that transforms simple base foods into something golden and memorable.

The tradition has never died out in countries with an agrarian society, farmers around the world with access to grains and clay have made simple clay ovens since time immemorial, baked their own bread and roasted or slow cooked their dinners every day for thousands of years. Once you’ve eaten food from a wood-fired oven, there’s really no going back! The flavours that the high heat brings out, the slight charring of meat, fish and vegetables, the crustiness and moistness of breads and the speed of a 60-90 second pizza mean that once mastered, the outdoor oven becomes a life long friend- solid, reliable and never lets you down...............

When we started our business in 2008, the market was pretty undeveloped for ovens and outdoor cooking and so when we looked around for suppliers, it was quite hard to find the right balance of quality and affordability. We installed all the major brands that were and are still around but found quality or design issues with all of them. Some arrived

wood-fired oven 2012

cracked, others the flue didn’t fit properly and one we had to send back as it was unusable. They all work and some are very cheap indeed but in the end we settled on French modular ovens as the best made in the world. Generally speaking, the ovens are lower in dome height than their Italian counterparts and have thicker walls to retain heat for longer. The Four Grand Mere range we now distribute along with Le Panyol are probably the closest you’ll come to a traditional wood-fired oven without it being clay/cob. Here are some of the ovens we make starting with simple cob..........

COB OVENS

Today, the simple clay/cob oven (see pictures above) is still available from

us, made in situ in your garden, over a re-usable sand form and most likely with a simple cover or roof to keep the worst of the rain off the structure. They are the least expensive of our large range of ovens, with the clay sourced locally and the chopped straw from a local horse bedding supplier. With the addition of refractory aggregates, the result is an amazingly basic and cheap oven that can be decorated while the clay is still wet with intaglio or low relief patterns giving a truly bespoke, hand-made product. We have made them for private customers, schools and even a rare animal sanctuary. With the growing interest in ‘street food’ the clay cob oven comes into its own giving an authenticity to the cooking that’s difficult to achieve with more conventional cookers. No wonder then that we get asked to build clay ovens for pub gardens where the street food ethic has started to take root. They can be made to more or less any size, have very thick walls ( up to 180mm!) and must be built on a solid base structure about a metre high. Apart from that, there are no design constraints and can be infinitely customised to make a truly 21stC oven.

wood-fired oven 2012

BRICK OVENS

In countries where there is seasonal rainfall and where communities have settled more permanently in towns and cities, the development of fired brick as opposed to compressed earth block, led inevitably to ovens constructed of the new material. Historically, the same bricks used in general building were used for the oven domes, making larger structures possible without significant deterioration through high heat. Later, when clays were differentiated by mineral content, it was found that lighter yellowy clays high in natural aluminium held heat better than the older red clays and slowly over time, firebrick as it is now known, replaced the red brick.

As with cob ovens, brick ovens are highly customisable in size and shape and are only limited by the skill and wit of the mason building the structure.We make brick ovens in situ up to 120 cm diameter without any formwork. The skill we h a v e i n b u i l d i n g f r e e f o r m d o m e s c o m e s f r o m experience, work ing

slowly and methodically to prevent collapse and continually assessing the domes’ progress as it arches over to a point where the brick joints are almost vertical. It takes nerve and the occasional fall of brick reminds us that the process still requires mastery even after years of building!

wood-fired oven 2012

FRENCH MODULAR OVENS

We have been distributing Four Grand Mere ovens since 2010 and they

have proved over and over again that they are amongst the best made ovens in the world. FGM have been developing new ovens since 1979 and with their low vault height and superior refractory materials, they are probably the most efficient ovens on the market. All orders placed with FGM through us take between 2-4 weeks to manufacture and deliver to your door, leaving a convenient time to get on with building the foundation and base structure to carry the weight of the oven when it arrives. With a range of ovens from as small as 70 cm internal diameter right up to 2m for a professional bakery oven, there will always be an oven right for you! Apart from the largest ovens, the range comes with the option of a lower cost refractory concrete vault or a higher cost brick vault. Almost all the ovens have refractory clay tile hearths which means that they retain the heat,

slowly releasing it back, cooking foods to perfection. In addition to the vault material option, there is the option of a higher entry arch and vault, raised by 75 mm from the standard, meaning that large roasts such as goose,

wood-fired oven 2012

turkey or suckling pig can be accommodated easily. As you will see from the small thumbnail pictures, the ovens arrive in sections making it relatively straightforward to assemble on site and with two people (or with a bit of lifting gear one person) the ovens can be ready to fire in a day.

After a series of small firings to drive off residual moisture in the structure, the oven can be heated up to a working temperature of 400-450C which will cook a pizza in under 90 seconds! Firing the oven takes a good 10-12 kg of dry hardwood logs so make sure you have a good supply of dry, or better still kiln-dried firewood so that you get the most heat out of the fuel. There is nothing worse than throwing in log after log and getting little heat in return so it is a wise investment to buy good quality firewood and let it dry to a minimum of 20% moisture before using it. After all, you won’t want a sooted up flue and certainly you won’t enjoy wasting hours of valuable time waiting for an oven that never heats up. We can supply you with UK grown sustainably harvested kiln-dried firewood so don’t worry- we have a 2/3 day service or a higher priced next day service for those in a hurry, In a nutshell then, the FGM ovens can be installed indoors or out, in residential or commercial surroundings and can be made to coordinate with any design scheme, making them the perfect partner for all your cooking and entertaining needs.....

wood-fired oven 2012

OUTDOOR KITCHENS + PUB GARDENS +

We started building outdoor cooking areas a few years ago as additions

to the garden ovens we installed. Inevitably, clients needed work surfaces and cupboards for storage and from then it was only a matter of time before the whole thing became an independent unit separate from the

house and included sink, taps, BBQ, grill and fridge. Larger installations have incorporated an open-sided roof structure (above, a project in St Georges Hill, Weybridge) keeping the worst of the weather out and are completely self-contained cooking and entertaining areas set in secluded areas of the garden. These installations tend to be expensive but the great thing is they are entirely scalable and with the huge range of materials and appliances available, a scheme can always be designed to fit a budget.

wood-fired oven 2012

Above are two schemes from 2011, the left hand image is in London’s Belsize Park, and is a modest but smart scheme for a small smart modern garden. The design of the oven coordinates with the render and pebble detail of the terrace and provides a small but convenient area to cook and entertain. The right hand image is a larger scheme we did in The Chalfonts, Buckinghamshire with a large hand-made red brick oven with wings of Yorkstone work surfaces and Indian Kadai firebowl bbq’s set into the stone. The oven dome inside is a bespoke hand-built firebrick vault and hearth and has plenty of space for cooking up to 4-5 pizzas at a time, one of the requirements agreed with the client as they entertain with friends regularly. The design reflects the Arts and Crafts style of the new build house but is set at the end of the garden to catch evening sun in the summer. Below are two pub gardens, the left being a well-known music

venue The Half Moon in Putney, London who wanted an informal outdoor cooking area and bar for garden users. On the right is a proposed design for a clay/cob oven under cover for a pub in Chelsea, London who wanted a

wood-fired oven 2012

more ‘street stall’ look to the installation. This will be going ahead in june 2012 and will enable the pub to supply food to customers straight out of the oven. Both schemes reflect the fact that many pubs cannot rely on drinks sales alone and many have chosen a gastropub solution to survive. Even this area is getting extremely competitive with excellent food being served but comes at some cost both to the diner and the pub whose investment in high quality kitchen equipment and staff means that there is often a high price tag for eating out. These outdoor ovens are a great compromise for the busy pub as they can produce high quality food quickly, at reasonable cost - surely a win/win outcome for both the pub and customer alike.

We have a wide range of accessories and tools available on the website to make eating outside a fun and relaxing experience so make that your first port of call to see what we have to offer. There are slideshows of builds plus more information on the full range of ovens we supply and install.

We pride ourselves on our design skills and much prefer to design

schemes to reach particular outcomes for each client rather than reproduce past successes. If you are one of those clients who likes to be experimental and wants something out of the ordinary, contact us and we’ll arrange an informal meeting to discuss your particular project.........

T: 0044 1225 867971E: info@wood-firedoven.co.ukW: www.wood-firedoven.co.uk

wood-fired oven 2012