I'm a Pizza-Making Pro, and This Is the First Wood-Burning Oven for Home I've Liked

I gained my chef reputation and a handful of James Beard nominations by being edgy. I’ll wear it: I was trying to out-weird my neighbors with seemingly nonsensical food pairings in dishes, like blending Thai and German elements (and it worked). Given that, many people are shocked at my true cooking love. I’m a devotee of Central Italian cuisine. I found my home in it when I turned my back on the fine dining trends of the 1990s. In sharp contrast to just putting Chèvre or sundried tomatoes in a dish, the foods of Lazio, Campania, and Tuscany were deceptively simple and deadly effective. I started as a pizza cook, later becoming a chef, and then studying in the region.

As a pizza cook, it was my job to tend the wood-burning oven — building the fire up in the morning and banking it at night, never letting it die so the stones wouldn’t cool and possibly crack. It goes without saying we used the oven for pizza, but the hardwood flavor it imbued into food had me roasting legs of veal for cappelletti filling, mussels, and legs of lamb, too. That distinct memory of tasting the wood in the food is the yardstick I’ve used to measure all wood-burning ovens moving forward. I hadn’t found one for home use that I considered worthwhile until last month.  The Breeo Live-Fire Pizza Oven caught and kept my attention. 

Breeo Live-Fire Pizza Oven

The Breeo-Live-Fire Pizza Oven sits on top of one of Breeo’s X-series fire pits, adding 19 inches to the pit for an overall height of about 34 inches, minimizing bending for tall people. It’s worth noting that you do need the fire pit to get the attachment, but I think it’s worth it since this is the kind of pizza oven you’ll have forever. 

Since the oven is made from steel and features ceramic pizza stones, altogether it weighs about 75 pounds, making it nearly impossible to lift alone (but incredibly durable). Once positioned over the fire pit, the design allows you to easily feed the fire, and to easily insert pizzas with two separate openings. There is also a chimney, which makes it easy to control the temperature inside of the oven, and a built-in thermometer that makes it easy to gauge how hot the oven is at any given time.  

Using this oven is incredibly easy. My pizzas cooked in about two minutes, the fire infused them with the subtle wood-smoke flavor I’d been chasing for a few decades, and that wasn’t from a charred bottom, either. After pizza success, I tried some non-pizza dishes to see if this was a single-purpose appliance. I played with the damper, tweaking the temperature to a safe baking range, and made a few loaves of Pugliese, which yielded a crust that sounded like a timpani and a soft, moist crumb with a perfect hint of wood smoke flavor. I also roasted a spatchcocked chicken in a cast iron pan with equally pleasant results. I had to add more wood for these longer cooking projects, which was an easy task via the oven’s large opening between the stone baking surface and the fire pit. 

Breeo offers a $150 tool bundle that includes a peel, a pizza board, and a mezza luna cutter, making life infinitely easier if you don’t already have comparable tools. Ultimately, the pizza, bread, and chicken all had the subtle wood flavor I’d found lacking in other ovens. On top of that, after learning from my initial mistakes, this oven is severely uncomplicated. The intricacies total building a suitably sized fire for your purpose, maintaining the fire, and adjusting the sliding damper to reach your desired temperature. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you master it, you’re unstoppable. 

Bottom line: The oven and fire pit represent an investment, but their sturdiness and manufacturing quality lead me to believe this is a long-term engagement I’d recommend to anyone. 

At the time of publishing, the price was $850.