Fourneau began with the invention of the Fourneau Bread Oven, the only front-opening bread cloche for home ovens. Fourneau’s innovative cloche design allows home bread bakers to take dutch oven bread to the next level, with a safer, easier, faster baking process. The same principles that guided the design of the Fourneau bread oven–sustainability, ergonomics, performance – drive their other product lines in cookware and outdoor cooking as well. Their cast iron cooking products are designed to be lighter weight than other cast iron pans and also have longer handles for easier handling as well as a more elegant look. Their products are all USA designed and assembled.
Founder Ted Burdett is a Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and brings his fun and adorable teaching style to Fourneau customers by offering videos on a wide range of subjects, from how to re-season cast iron pans, to how to make no-knead bread. Fourneau’s informative (and humorous) videos are viewable on their website and YouTube.
Founding Story
Fourneau was launched on Kickstarter in 2015 by Ted and Sharon Burdett, a couple of design nerds who love cooking as much as design. Their goal was to help home bakers make their best bread ever, and with the support of almost 800 backers in 20 countries, they brought the Fourneau to life. Since then, Fourneau has continued to evolve as a product line, as a company, and as a passion project.
In 2021 the team decided to expand the scope of Fourneau beyond bread with the addition of their cast iron cookware line, Ironwood Cookware, which offers a sleek, long-handled cast iron skillet and a gorgeous cast iron roaster.
Fourneau is a family company founded by designers who love to travel, eat, cook, and enjoy food with friends. Their products are born from their own experiences in the kitchen and combine their passion for good design with their intense love of cooking. The Fourneau team has grown to include Nick Martin, Bo Moody and Katie Burdett. Together, they're working to make new products to enable great cooking experiences at home and new content to inspire your cooking adventures.
Fourneau is always looking for ways to innovate the way artisan chefs and bakers cook and bake, whether at home, outside, or in a commercial kitchen.
Ted is an industrial designer with a wide range of experience from creating hand-crafted guitars to designing for overseas textile manufacture. Driven largely by an insatiable curiosity around materials and process, Ted strives to design objects that solve tangible problems and bring beauty to people’s homes. He shares his knowledge and enthusiasm for design and entrepreneurship with dozens of students every year as a professor at The University of Illinois at Chicago. When Ted isn't teaching or designing you’ll probably find him cooking over a fire, baking bread, or catching waves in Lake Michigan.
