How do I choose a wood-fired oven ?

A good wood-fired oven is the promise of delicious meals shared with family and friends: bread, pizzas, barbecues, stews and more. But between traditional wood-fired ovens, designer ovens and some compact appliances that look like pizza ovens, how can you be sure you're choosing the model that's best suited to your needs? Follow our guide to find the oven that best suits your desires and lifestyle.

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The dimensions of your wood-fired oven

To choose the right size of wood-fired oven, you need to take into account 2 quite different criteria: the number of guests, and the space available to install your oven.

The size of the sole

The refractory hearth is the flat part of the oven on which the food to be cooked rests. If you often have a lot of people in your home, we recommend you opt for a slightly larger hearth. These practical tips will help you make the right choice :

• A 70 cm diameter hearth is designed for 6 to 8 guests. You can cook 2 pizzas measuring 28 cm in diameter or 3 casseroles measuring 30 cm.
• An 80 cm diameter hearth is ideal for 10 to 12 people. 3 pizzas of 28 cm or 4 casseroles of 30 cm can be cooked at the same time.
• On a 95 cm diameter hearth, 4 28 cm pizzas or 5 30 cm casseroles can cook together. That’s enough to easily satisfy fifteen or so gourmets !

Do you like very large tables, but you’re not a pizza maker by trade? Bear in mind that putting 3 or 4 pizzas in the oven, cooking them and ‘turning’ them at the same time requires a certain amount of training.
If you do, there are some very simple tricks you can use to quickly treat all your guests with a 70 or 80 cm sole. You can start by serving 2 or 3 28 cm pizzas, which you cut into small slices. When your guests start to feel full, it’s time to offer them personalised pizzas, with a choice of toppings !

Floor space requirement

All Grand-Mère oven product sheets clearly state their exterior dimensions, including the refractory fireclay structure and insulation. Our best-seller, the Le Campagnard wood-fired oven, for example, measures 1.10 m by 1.06 m. If you don’t have a lot of space, the Le Flamme will certainly suit you, as this small oven for grills and pizzas measures just 91 cm by 87 cm.

To these external dimensions must be added :

• Or the cladding or finish you have chosen (bricks, rendering, etc.).
• Or the complete turnkey installation kit.

Please note : if you wish to install an oven with a cladding hood indoors or outdoors under cover, you must have a minimum ceiling height of 2.50 m for the hood and flue.

Open or closed hearth cooking ?

In principle, a wood-fired oven can be used for 2 very different types of cooking :

• Open hearth cooking, when food is cooked in the presence of embers or flames. This cooking method involves leaving the door open to supply the fire with oxygen. This is mainly used for pizzas, tarts flambées, grills, etc.
• Closed hearth cooking, after removing the ashes from the cooking chamber and cleaning the hearth. This closed door preparation is used for bread, but also for many traditional recipes such as lasagne, gratins, stuffed vegetables, cassoulet, etc.

All ovens designed for closed hearth cooking, also known as bread ovens, are in fact multi-purpose ovens. You can also prepare excellent pizzas and tarts flambées in them. On the other hand, you’ll have trouble successfully baking bread or casseroles in some compact stainless steel pizza ovens. Their walls simply aren’t thick enough to store enough heat and release it evenly over several hours !

Heating time and inertia

A good wood-fired oven needs to be hot enough to produce crispy pizzas. But it also has to stay hot long enough to allow you to fulfil all your culinary desires. This ability to retain and release heat depends above all on the nature and thickness of the materials used.

For example, there are lightweight, compact stainless steel pizza ovens on the market. These ovens heat up very quickly… but cool down almost as quickly. Don’t expect to cook anything other than pizzas in them !
Some cast-iron ovens have more interesting properties, but their inertia capacity will always be lower than that of a refractory fireclay oven.

To guarantee maximum inertia, Grand-Mère ovens are made from refractory fireclay and optimally protected with 3 high-quality insulators. After reaching 250 to 300 degrees in 45 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, depending on the model, our ovens can rise to 350-400 degrees if you wish. They then lose only 7 degrees on average per hour. The ideal compromise for long hours of cooking and conviviality !

Energy consumption

In addition to their excellent insulation, Grand-Mère ovens have a very low parabolic vault, specially designed to radiate heat efficiently. Thanks to this very special shape, our ovens consume on average 30% less wood.

For example, our smallest designer oven, Alfred, only needs 3.36 kg of wood for pre-heating, then 2.3 kg per hour for open hearth cooking. What’s more, closed hearth cooking is in a way free cooking time, as it doesn’t require any additional wood.

Even the largest of our home ovens, Le Gourmet, consumes just 13.5 kg of wood for pre-heating, then 3.4 kg of wood per hour of open hearth cooking.

The design

An authentic, efficient wood-fired oven that brings out the best in all your dishes is great. A beautiful oven that blends in perfectly with its surroundings is even better ! Before making your choice, find out about the finishes and trims available.

Four Grand-Mère offers you a range of turnkey oven dressings to match your interior or exterior decor :

• Fibreglass-reinforced epoxy resin hood to give your oven a plastered look.
• White resin shell and solid fir tripod for our range of designer wood-fired ovens, which are very easy to assemble.
• Ultra-modern composite resin shell and base for our Le Gourmet and Le Grand Flamme models.

Would you like another made-to-measure finish? You can dress any of our traditional ovens as you like, delivered in 3 to 6 ready-to-assemble pieces. You can do the dressing yourself or have it done by a craftsman-mason. Here are a few examples of Grand-Mère ovens installed by our customers, both indoors and outdoors.

A 1 or 2 input oven ?

Finally, Four Grand-Mère gives you the option of accessing your oven from the house and garden, or from 2 different rooms, thanks to a second door available on Le Campagnard and Le Gourmet ovens.

Depending on the layout of your home, this additional entrance can be positioned at 90, 135 or 180 degrees to the first.

Do you have any other questions about Grand-Mère ovens? Just contact us ! One of our advisers will get back to you very quickly.