THE STORY OF OUR FORNO

Dublin houses the first authentic fixed Neapolitan wood-fire oven and first restaurant in Ireland to hold the accreditation from the Association Verace Pizza Neapolitana in Naples. There are very few artisan wood-fired oven manufacturers left in Naples. We found the best – a fourth generation Neapolitan oven manufacturing family. It took nine months to convince the Ferarra family and their team of Artisans to leave their factory in Naples to come to Dublin to build their very first fixed oven here in Ireland. Nine tonne pallets of original materials were shipped into Dublin in anticipation of their arrival. We booked their flights and accommodation and the team of artisans were flown into Dublin. Brick-by-brick from the ground up they built an ancient style oven using original materials and Old World Neapolitan techniques to the City Centre.

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. Says Mr Ferarra “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 scorching temperatures of 500 degrees and it is this style oven that can be found fixed in the best street pizzerias all over Naples”.

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