Mr L, from Surrey, has a love of making pizza and relishes the al fresco lifestyle, so is now delighted that he found his way to Orchard Ovens’ door and became a Fornino 75 wood-fired oven owner.

Mr L found the Valoriani Fornino 75 through online search and was particularly drawn to references to Tuscan clay, this denoting an authenticity behind the oven that can be rare to find in the UK pizza oven market.  Owning something genuine, backed by artisanship and a Valoriani family heritage stretching back generations, mattered to him.

Now, his gorgeous black, DEFRA-compliant, Fornino wood fired oven is a great match for his black barbecue, making his patio not just a place of culinary pleasure but also a stylish extension to his home’s catering facilities. 

All-essential heat retention was something that Mr L definitely wanted in his wood oven and that’s just what he got with his Fornino.  As he says, “It is quick to heat up but also cool to the touch”, making it safe to use in any family environment.

He also appreciates the internal capacity that the Fornino 75 provides, enabling him to cook two pizzas at once, without fear of the edges touching the fire or embers and getting burnt.

He and his wife make their own dough and experiment with pizza toppings, making Friday nights real occasions to look forward to, as delicious wood-fired pizza and glasses of wine celebrate the end of the working week in a truly Italian way. 

They have also learned the art of using the residual heat from the oven, the morning after the night before, to cook truly moreish bacon for their breakfast.

Apart from this, they use the oven to rustle up the odd casserole but, for now, pizza rules the menu.  That may change, however, as becoming Fornino 75 wood-fired oven owners has sparked their culinary imagination and they are to enjoy a wood fired cookery course at Devon-based cookery school, Manna from Heaven.

As well as being delighted with their Valoriani woodburning oven, they were very impressed by the Orchard Ovens’ service, having opted for a white glove installation that saw the oven delivered and assembled for them.  They are also hugely impressed to find that all the credentials of the garden oven, which they heard about during the sales process, are actually fact and not fiction.

With a friend nearby having the same wood fired pizza oven, a little enclave of Fornino 75 owners is developing in the local area in Surrey, with all owners delighted with the choice they made and happy to endorse the Fornino 75 as a superb woodburning oven for any homeowner who loves the al fresco lifestyle, cooking – or both.