Cato Hetland has run Tegl og Betong (Tile and Concrete), for over 25 years. The company specialises in garden solutions in natural stone – from project design to the finished product. He says that outdoor ovens have become increasingly popular in recent years.

Here’s what you need to think about before inviting friends over for homemade pizza from your stone pizza oven.

What you want to use the oven for determines the product – and price class – you should opt for.

– It’s important to remember that a large stone oven can be used for much more than pizzas, Cato explains.

He says that the ovens his company installs the most are outdoor baker’s ovens. They can naturally be used for pizzas, but also for so much more.

– If all you want to do is bake pizzas, there are many reasonably good pizza ovens you can buy. But the largest of our ovens can also be used to bake bread or to slow-roast meat. Personally, I think stone ovens are great for slow-roasting lamb, he adds.

A decent-sized stone oven will take up a bit of space. In fact, it’s important that the oven isn’t too small.

– We recommend that you never go below 70 x 70 cm when building a baker’s oven, quite simply because a lot of heat will be concentrated in a small area, which can present cooking challenges, he says.

The ovens Tegl og Betong supply have a standard oven size of 90 x 90 cm, in which case a number of baking zones can be established.

– As your wood burns down to charcoal, you can have different areas inside the oven where the heat is lower. This means you can use the oven to cook different types of food at the same time, Hetland says.

You can also cook large amounts of the same type of food.

– In the largest of our ovens, there is actually room for 16 loaves of bread at the same time and I’ve actually cooked for 40 family-party guests in a baker’s oven, he says.

Hetland explains that his company often clads ovens with natural stone such as slate or soapstone.

– This gives a cosy and authentic feel to the garden. And it’s also low-maintenance, he adds.

He thinks Oppdal slate is especially good for the baker’s ovens his firm builds. Here you can see the selection of slate bricks and matching worktops in the same type of slate.

– Using locally sourced materials such as Norwegian natural stone works really well in an outdoor kitchen. So whether it’s a baker’s oven, a kitchen or something else, it’s mostly Norwegian natural stone that is used. It also works well for a seaside cabin.

Get more inspiration for outdoor kitchens here.

The baker’s oven itself is a relatively compact structure and the walls are almost 12 cm thick.

– Inside the oven, we use stone imported from Germany, which insulates well and retains the heat for a long time. Once the oven is hot, it can retain the heat for days, Hetland says.

The insulating materials also mean that the oven can reach an incredible 1,000 degrees, but this means that it takes a while to get the oven really hot.

– You need to start heating up the oven around an hour and a half before you can bake your pizza, he says.

On the other hand, Hetland does not recommend letting the oven get too hot. He also asserts that the time spent on heating up the oven will be rewarded once you begin to cook.

– It’s not a good idea to heat the oven beyond 700 degrees. If you want a perfect pizza, I would recommend a temperature of between 400 and 450 degrees. Then the pizza will bake in around 30 seconds.

Buon apetito!