Wood-fired ovens have been with us since the dawn of civilization. They have been discovered in virtually every ancient civilization, but most famously in ancient Rome. The brick ovens found in ancient Pompeii are still in wonderful shape in museums throughout Europe and they say you could start baking in them today.

Throughout northern Europe, the ovens tended to be incredibly large and the property of the Lord of that area. He would own both the oven and the heat inside and would charge the serfs for baking their bread. In Italy, the ovens tended to be owned by families and were smaller; this, in turn, gave far more people access to the wood-fired experience and later became the foundation for Italy’s modern pizza oven industry. Virtually every Tuscan farmhouse has either an original brick or stone oven, and many are still being used today.

The modern-day prefabricated refractory pizza oven was created in Italy around the turn of the century and really took off in Italy in the 1970s, with a resurgence of brick oven cooking. The modernisation of Italy in the aftermath of the second world war, and acceptance of the electric “American Oven”, a large number of families reverted back to the ancient pleasure of wood-fired cooking and the recipes and techniques that their grandparents passed down from generation to generation.

During the 1990s, the creation of the modern refractory oven and insulating materials changed the dynamic of wood-fired cooking. The high-tech composites and materials reduced oven heat-up time from 2-3 hours to only 1 hour with excellent heat holding characteristics.

The oven used at Farmer Brown’s Pizzas was made by Sydney Firebricks! It takes our oven roughly 1 hour to get up to temperature ( around 350 – 400 degs) and will still retain a high amount of its heat (roughly 200-250 degs) until the next day! The oven can comfortably cook 4 pizzas at a time and take only 2-3 minutes to cook! In doing so we can easily cater to large crowds pumping out 80-90 pizzas an hour. This makes our Wood-Fired pizza catering at large events like weddings, parties, engagement parties, music festivals really easy. We service all over Brisbane, Logan, Ipswich, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.