Alfresco Chef: Wood Fired Outdoor Pizza’s At Home

Aside from the obvious such as family and friends, there are two things we are missing as a family over the last couple of months – our travels and eating out! As a family we love to travel, particularly to Italy, and when at home we love dining out at our local Italian for authentic pizzas and some quality family time together. So when Alfresco Chef offered us the opportunity to have a taste of Italy at home with one of their Ember Wood Fired Outdoor Pizza Ovens, you can imagine how excited the kids were to give it a try!

The Ember wood fired oven is not only a great addition to our garden during a time we are craving proper Italian pizza, but it’s portable too which means we can enjoy it when life returns to normal and we get to enjoy the things we love again – outdoor events with friends, camping, festivals and even days out too. It’s compact and easy to assemble, has a removable chimney and 12 inch pizza peel, and can heat up in just 10 minutes to a temperature of over 400°C making it perfect for not only pizzas but roasting meats too.

Once we had assembled the pizza oven it was a case of getting it started and for that you just need to place a couple of the Natural Wood Wool Firelighters in to the bottom of the oven alongside the Kiln Dried Oak Hardwood. Alfresco Chef have a fantastic range of wood fired oven accessories so you can literally get everything you need in one go!

Once the oven is starting to heat up you can add in more wood via the pull down hatch to reach your desired temperature. We found this did take a lot longer than ten minutes on our first go but I think perhaps it’s one of those things you need to practice at and the more pizzas you make, the easier it becomes! I’m more than happy to eat as many pizzas as it takes for us to master it!

The great thing is you have a handy temperature gauge so you can see exactly what temperature you’re at before your pizzas go in. The Ember oven has so many handy features but I think for me the fact it’s so easy to clean is a real plus. There’s nothing worse than having to scrub a barbecue or an oven like this each time you want to use it, so with a removable Cordierite stone tile you can just whip it out at the end, give it a wash and pop it back in! Bonus!

Not only does Alfresco Chef have some great ovens, they also have some fantastic accessories. We received a stainless steel pizza cutter, a wooden slice and serve board, a large plastic pizza press, a cleaning brush and a pizza dough at, all of which came in really handy when it came to making our first pizzas!

For our pizzas we used The Northern Dough Co frozen pizza with each box making two 12″ pizzas. You can make your pizzas any way you like but we used Passata, Salami, Mozzarella and some fresh basil. We also tried some ham, chicken, sweetcorn, mushrooms and pineapple! For the kids, making pizzas is one of their favourite thing to do and I find it’s a really easy way to encourage them to eat more vegetables by sneaking a few extras onto their pizza!

    The Alfresco Chef pizza dough mat is such a good idea showing you exactly how big to roll your pizza. It’s also non-stick so it meant the kids could help without it all getting stuck and a bit messy! I love that Alfresco Chef have thought of everything when it comes to their accessories, each serving a real purpose and compliment the wood fired ovens perfectly.

I’m not going to lie, our first pizza was a little bit of a disaster! The mistake we made was to create the pizza whilst on the dough mat resulting in a very sloppy and messy pizza when it came to lifting it onto the pizza peel. The key is to flour the peel, roll the dough, then place the pizza base on the peel before you start building your toppings. It’s easy when you know how!!

The next part is perfect for kids to get involved with, even very young children are capable of placing their toppings on the pizza base. The great thing about making your own pizzas is you can have as much or as little as you like, and for Megan that was little of the passata and lots of the cheese!!

You then just place the pizza into the wood fired oven, slide it onto the ceramic stone and then wait for it to cook! The kids adored this part too, I think there is something very exciting about cooking outdoors and particularly in the Winter too! I think that’s the thing I love the most about the Ember oven, it’s not just for Summer days in the garden or having friends over on a sunny day. It’s just as lovely in the Winter, on a dark and slightly drizzly night, with just the six of us at home watching at the window in our pyjamas whilst Gaz cooks our pizzas in his Winter coat. There’s something really special about those memories somehow.

When the pizza was done I was instantly excited by just how much it looked like the pizzas we tasted this Summer in Italy, with that rustic base and smoked edges, and it smelled absolutely delicious!! We couldn’t wait to try it and, with the Alfresco Chef pizza cutter it was ready to serve in no time!

When it comes to pizza my kids are very particular so the real test was whether it would pass their approval. Megan took one bite and declared it the best pizza she’s ever had in her whole life which is high praise indeed!! The Ember wood fired pizza oven is priced at £199.99 which on initial thought you may think is quite expensive but in comparison to the price of a weekly Italian take out, or meals out as a family when restrictions end, it’s actually a fantastic investment for authentic, home cooked pizza which is actually a whole lot of fun in the process.

We are definitely going to enjoy making pizzas together over the coming weeks and months, both through the winter and when Spring arrives and we can eat al fresco again in the garden. I can’t wait until things change and we can have friends over for pizza and drinks, or the children can invite friends over for pizza parties; there is so much to look forward to and yet for now, I will be cherishing these moments just the six of us with nothing whatsoever but each other…….and the worlds best pizza!!!

You an visit the Alfresco Chef website to find out more here:https://thealfrescochef.co.uk where you can also get a free cover worth £29.99 with the Ember oven by using code FIVELITTLEDOVES until the 17th January 2021. 

** We were gifted all of the items within this post for the purpose of our review. All words and opinions are my own **