Dennis L’s Vesuvio Masterpiece Installation

“We love to entertain and wanted a pizza oven to be the center of the entertainment area. We have theme parties such as pizzas (of course) where guests bring random ingredients and make unique pizzas that are judged. Nothing better than seeing smiles when baking at over 900 degrees and the pizza is done in less than a minute. True Neapolitan pizza fanatics also bring their own homemade dough to the party.

Mac and cheese parties are also a big hit. We make the “base” mac and cheese and people bring toppings and special cheeses – we have 6″ cast iron skillets where guests make their unique M&C – the oven bakes to a crust on top, sides, and bottom for a dish that rivals the true Neapolitan Pizzas. Other fantastic uses include making the next day’s breakfast and dinner with the residual heat. (These ovens are well insulated and retain baking heat well into the next day.) We have also used the oven to bake an entire Thanksgiving Dinner featuring a 23-pound turkey!

Before buying, we visited many different pizza restaurants to witness how they made and served pizzas. We took what we learned and modified our patio design a few times before we finalized it. One of the most beneficial design features that we added was “wings” on both sides of the oven. These 2′ wide wings allow for staging of the pizzas to go into the oven and for cutting and serving the finished pizzas. The other design feature was an extra wide pizza-making area (about 40″) that can be accessed from two sides – this allows for up to 4 pizzas being made at one time (important for large parties of hungry people.)

We purchased the fully assembled residential oven and installation was easy, even though we were a bit nervous when the crane had to lift the oven over our house. The Vesuvio 110 is just a wonderful oven that can bake almost anything – let your imagination go wild!”

Name: Dennis L

Oven: Vesuvvio110

Location: La Mesa, CA

Enjoy this video interview with Dennis showing the before and after pictures of his build.