There are only two artisan wood-fired oven manufacturers left in Naples. We found the best of a fourth-generation Neapolitan oven manufacturer. It took nine months to convince the Fererra family and their team of Artisans to leave their factory in Naples to make their very first fixed oven in Ireland.
Nine tonne pallets of original materials were shipped into Dublin in anticipation of their arrival. Brick-by-brick from the ground up, a team of artisans were flown to Dublin to build an ancient style oven using original materials and Old World Neapolitan techniques to Dublin.
Taking ten days to construct, Santa Maria bricks from Campania were used in the walls and dome, the cooking surface is Biscotto di Sorrento and all of this is packed together with mortar made from volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius. Mr Fererra says that this is no prefabbed oven that you generally find in Europe, this oven this is an ancient style Forno that we built on site in Dublin using old world Neapolitan techniques, passed down from my great-grandfather.
We locked all workers out during the oven building process so that we could protect our local secrets. I first built ovens with my grandfather when I was just 13 years old, today my son and I carry on this ancient tradition. To this day our ovens routinely maintains daily dome temperatures of 500°C and it is this style oven that can be found fixed in the best street pizzerias all over Naples.
