Texas Oven Co. Makes The Most Baller Outdoor Grills And Ovens

Are you obsessed with wood-oven thin crust pizza? Do you have a cool 10 grand lying around that you've just been dying to spend to make thin crust pizza? If you find yourself nodding along, consider this your lucky day. And for what it's worth, we're with you on (at least?) one of those.

The Texas Oven Co. specializes in handcrafted firebrick pizza ovens and grills, equally as aesthetically impressive as the pizzas they create. The company consults with prospective buyers to plan fully customizable products, perfect for any awe-inspiring backyard. We reached out to Oven Master — yes, that's a real title — Dave Eberhardt to discuss the process behind building the "fire-breathing works of art."

What are customers most interested in building? What style?

Often we hear from people who have had amazing food from a wood-burning oven. They ate the best pizza of their lives from an old oven in Italy, or had a phenomenal meal at a friend's house where everything came out of a wood-burning oven. Most people are interested in a wood-burning oven made from firebrick with a style reminiscent of the ruins-of-Pompeii, something you'd see on a Tuscan hillside. Customers today want the cooking efficiency of modern materials and the quality and experience you get from working with a master craftsman.

What is the starting price? How baller can you go?

The oven core is only part of any project. Our finished ovens weigh thousands of pounds. Big projects like these involve a support structure. Then we cut the firebrick right on site and handcraft the oven. Finally, the customer chooses a finish-out style. Using local materials for people in our area, we can do an entire project for $10-$15,000. Ovens finished in imported materials, or with lots of steel, cost more. For clients out of state, ovens can be twice the cost of a basic Texas Oven. We also build various combo-units — wood-burning ovens on top of a fireplace, wood-burning ovens with a smoker. It all depends on what our customer wants.

How much kitchen skill do you need to use your grills/ovens?

It's surprisingly easy to use our ovens. It's the way people have cooked for thousands of years. Light the fire, build up the heat, move the fire over and put in the food — any kind of food. Pizzas when the oven is really hot. Then as the oven cools, artisan breads, meats and vegetables, braises, beans and stocks. Getting started is exciting, but some people have never built a fire before. And even if you've wanted to bake pizza at 1,000 degrees, it takes a little know-how. That's why we enjoy throwing our first-fire parties. When the oven is done, our customers invite their friends and family for the party. We bring dough for pizza and pick up all kinds of interesting things to put in the oven, like sausage, fish, brussels sprouts, figs, whatever looks good or is in season locally. We bring pre-cut wood, build the fire and show customers how to manage the cooking zones. It's a great way to get started and have fun with a new oven.

Do you have any celebrity clients?

Yes, we have celebrity clients including locally and nationally known chefs. We develop friendships with our clients and don't name names or share personal information.

How long is the process for having one built?

It depends on what the customer wants and where the oven will be built. With good weather, we build a stand-alone oven with local stone finish-out in two weeks.

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