Forno Bravo Background

We became fascinated with brick pizza ovens years ago. After experimenting with pizza stones and quarry tiles in our electric oven, we decided to build an outdoor brick oven at our home in the California wine country. Construction was challenging, and the oven design itself had many flaws. In fact, it was the drawbacks we experienced with that design that led us to create the Pompeii Oven™ plans. Still, cooking in our own wood-fired brick oven was eye opening. That first oven changed the way we cooked and entertained. We built a second oven in our kitchen, installed pizza ovens at our home in Italy, and several for friends and family in Europe. We were hooked, and we wanted to share our expertise with others. After long careers as entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, we were ready for something new -- and old.

Today, Forno Bravo is a global leader in residential and commercial pizza ovens. We have cultivated relationships with Italy's premier pizza oven, pizza ingredient, and oven accessory producers, and built partnerships with world-class brick oven experts, installers and masons in Britain and the US. In the UK, Alf Armstrong, a world-wide authority on brick ovens, is using his experience to help British homeowners, caterers and restaurant owners get the most from wood-fired cooking.

While the pizza oven is nearly as common in Italy as the barbecue, and virtually every village has at least one Pizzeria Forno a Legna, wood-fired cooking has remained a luxury few could afford in the United States or Britain. But Forno Bravo has changed that.

We enjoy bringing the pleasure of these wonderful ovens to a far wider range of families, chefs and restaurants. We see education as an important part of our mission, so www.fornobravo.com is packed with information on oven selection, installation, management, techniques, ingredients and recipes. FornoBravo.com is growing every day, so please come back often. We are building a wonderful community.

The wood-fired brick oven evokes a time when life was a little slower, and perhaps the food was a little better. It allows us to enjoy a style of cooking that is both authentic, yet capable of producing the best food in the world. After all, there is only one way to make an authentic Italian pizza, and that is with a wood-fired oven. Hear what other folks think about Forno Bravo on our Testimonials page.

We look forward to helping you enjoy the experience of wood-fired brick oven cooking, and bringing wood-fired cooking to restaurants around the world.

Salute,

James Bairey
Forno Bravo, LLC