You’re more likely to know someone who has a Pizza oven in their garden now than ever before. Alfresco cooking and dining is growing in popularity, and the home pizza oven is being swept along with that trend. While it’s great fun to spend some family time creating and cooking traditional-style Italian pizza outdoors in the summer sun, what happens once the nights draw in and the temperature drops? 

Home Pizza Ovens has introduced a solution to its range in the form of the Fernus Stovetop Pizza Oven. Created by Dutch brand Fernus&Friends, this offering allows you to create fabulous stone-baked pizza, whatever the weather. In the summer, you can set up the pizza oven atop your barbeque burners or a rocket stove, and in winter, it can sit on your gas hob instead.

The first UK retailer to offer pizza lovers this option, Home Pizza Ovens founder Dan Hart commented, “The Fernus Stovetop Pizza Oven is a great addition to our range, offering a convenient, quick pizza oven for those looking for delicious pizza, created in super-quick time.” Each pizza cooks in around four minutes, creating a crisp base and that authentic Italian pizza look. It won’t take up too much space, either; “it’s so compact, it’s also our smallest oven to store when not in use,” said Dan. 

How Does It Work?

Once it’s set up and on the heat source, the oven heats to a blistering 350°C recorded by an inbuilt thermometer on the top. Inside the pizza oven, a cordierite pizza stone heats up, too, ready to ensure a crispy pizza base. The angled underside allows the heat of the flames from the gas hob or barbecue to flow around the chamber, circulating the air to promote an even bake. The oven can also be used at lower temperatures for baking, smoking and steaming.

How Easy Is It To Use?

Average Joes tried out the Fernus Stovetop Pizza Oven, both on a stand-alone gas burner in the garden and on the gas hob in the kitchen. The first thing we noted was just how easy it was to set up and use. There’s nothing complex — make sure the base is firmly seated in the correct position over the heat source, put the pizza stone in place, and then put the top and door on. These simply rest in place, so there’s no complex assembly required.

Outside, it took a while to get up to temperature, but it was a chilly night with a breeze, so that’s not a surprise. Once it got to temperature, though, it stayed pretty constant. The inbuilt thermometer makes it easy to check on the heat in the oven, ensuring it was up to a suitably high temperature before we put the first pizza in to cook. 

On the gas hob top in the kitchen, it got up to temperature a little more quickly, again holding steady with ease. Once you’re ready to go, it’s just a matter of getting your beautifully prepared pizza off the worktop and onto the pizza stone. Thankfully, a pizza peel is included with your purchase, but getting the dough onto that takes a little practice! Once you’ve mastered getting it on and off the peel, the rest is easy. Sit back and relax for a few minutes, and you’re ready to retrieve your creation.

How To Make the Most of It

Ask a hundred pizza eaters what the best pizza is, and you’ll get a hundred different answers. True aficionados will spend time developing their dough, finding the finest yeast, and working with the raw materials to create the perfect base. That takes time and dedication and is absolutely worth it.

However, we don’t all have the luxury of that much spare time. Don’t worry, I’m not about to recommend a pre-made frozen base that’ll go damp and taste like cardboard. No, instead, there’s been a boom in ready-to-roll dough, from known brands such as Pizza Express to newcomers like the Northern Dough Co. We tried their frozen Beer Crust Dough. Once it’s been defrosted, you’ve got fresh dough to roll, throw, stretch and tear.

Mixing pizza and craft beer sounds like a winner, and we were impressed by the results from this dough. The base came out perfectly crisp and incredibly light, with a deeper flavour than a simple plain crust. High protein flour and olive oil combine to create a surprisingly tasty base on which to build your perfect pizza. Just like an oven, it’s not quite as good as doing it all yourself, but it’s very close and so much quicker and easier.

Is It Any Good?

There is no denying that a dedicated pizza oven produces some fabulous results, and that’s mostly down to the temperatures they can reach. This stovetop oven can’t quite get to the heady heights of a purpose-built model, but it gets closer than any conventional oven can manage. The results are, as you might expect, far better than a home-baked pizza and nearly as good as something from a traditional pizza oven. The ability to do that in all weather holds great appeal, too.

The Fernus Stovetop Pizza Oven isn’t without its flaws, though. While its compact size is a bonus when it comes to storage, it does limit the size of the pizza you can make to a maximum of 27cm (around 10 inches) diameter, so if you’re a big eater, that might leave you peckish. As with most pizza ovens, you can only cook one at a time, but given the few minutes it takes to cook each one, that’s not such an issue – as long as there’s a drink or two on offer, making it a social event isn’t too tricky. 

The most striking problem is that gas hobs are less common in kitchens than they were just a few years ago, and with the focus on reducing fossil fuel use and emissions, they may be set to become even more scarce. If you don’t have a gas hob to make the oven usable inside, you have to question the logic of using it with a separate heat source outside when there are other integrated versions available.

How Much Does It Cost? 

The Fernus Stovetop Pizza Oven is solid and well made from cast aluminium and available in three colours: duck green, charcoal matt black and pure polished aluminium. Made to be both simple and functional, Fernus&Friends products are all original and cleverly designed; each is produced from high-quality materials, and each is created sustainably and will last for many years. The pizza oven, pizza stone and pizza peel are included, costing £289 from Home Pizza Ovens.

What’s the Verdict?

If you pick up a Chicago Town pizza at the supermarket, it’s probably a bit of overkill. However, if you’re a pizza aficionado that makes (or buys) and rolls their own dough and wants to produce high-quality pizzas all year round, the stovetop pizza oven is an investment you won’t regret making.

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