There is a technique to lighting a traditional wood fired pizza oven.  Once you have mastered it will only take about 10-20 minutes to get the oven up to heat.

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Key things to note are:

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• Do not use paper to light the fire. Use a natural firelighter instead.

• Use Kindling and Kiln Dried Silver Birch logs as fuel.

• Silver Birch logs need to be 10-12 inches long and 3 inches wide for all ovens apart from the Igneus Minimo. (We reccomend 6 inches long and 1 inch wide for the Minimo)

• WARNING: Do not use any form of accelerants such as petrol, kerosene or paraffin as it is extremely dangerous.

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Lighting technique:

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1. Build a tower of kindling in the centre of your oven. Use a natural firelighter (such as Twizzlers) to get the fire going.

2. Light the natural firelighter with a match and leave the door off the oven and the chimney damper open (if the oven has a damper). The fire should begin to build up.

3. For 10 minutes keep adding kindling into the pizza oven at the rate of about 4 pieces every couple of minutes.

4. You should now begin to see a healthy red glow from the significant pile of embers, with a healthy yellow flame coming from the large kindling as it burns. The fire should be well established now.

5. When you have reached 450 – 500C, you will then move the fire to the back or side of your pizza oven. Do this by using the embers rake or brush. (The Clementi requires the fire to be on the left side of the oven)

6. Now add 2 or 3 silver birch logs into the fire (use the pizza peel to place them onto the fire). These should burn for about 25-30 minutes before the oven needs to be fed once again.