When it comes to pizza, there’s more than one pathway to the perfect slice. At least that’s what our expert testers discovered when they recently reviewed pizza ovens (member content).
They found many pizza ovens on review were versatile and could pump out a lot more pizza than a standard oven. However, modern ovens can feature a ‘pizza mode’, as can some models of BBQ and we know that more kitchen appliances can be a drain on cupboard or storage space.
So, what are your thoughts? Have you (or would you) try a pizza oven for a better quality/higher volume result, or is it better to stick with the standard equipment in your household. Please vote in our poll and share your comments below.
We also have an oven with Pizza mode, it does a very worthwhile job but the BBQ Stone pizza oven fitting does the best we have found of the two. We have never had a dedicated Pizza oven, we don’t eat them enough to provide room and money to it.
We’ve always used a standard electric oven but also have a stone base we got from somewhere years ago. The combination works well. We don’t eat pizza that often - perhaps once a month. Having said that I would like a wood fired oven, not just for pizza but also roasts, bread rolls and loaves and other items but since the cost for a smaller one is about $3K (and that is building it yourself from a kit) it will remain a dream. If we entertained more then possibly.
Apologies, the option of take away or eat in at the local wood fired pizza has been omitted.
A select few have one at home. All I can suggest is the traditional oven is best. Judged by the local not far from Ciampino, Roma. Well not so local since Covid.
Alternately a regular oven, gas fired with pizza stone well heated to the 220-240C is as good as it gets. The type of base - thin and stretchy, with avoidance of too many toppings (Italian style vs Aussie more is best) helps.
We always make our own from scratch, including the bases, and use a standard fan forced oven to cook the pizzas we make. We find the bought ones too salty and oily, and also have a background taste which tends to be the same no matter the topping (it appears to be from the flavoured sauces used to dress the bases).
We also have a pizza stone which we have used once or twice, but don’t think it makes a significant difference to the base when cooked. Our pizzas have thick bases and cooked at 175°C for about 25-30 minutes…
My other half would like a wood fired oven in the backyard to do pizzas and breads…but it may be an overkill for the amount of times we are likely to use it.
We use a Pizzaiolo pizza oven in our kitchen. The pizzas come out really well in it. The only issues are you can only cook one pizza at a time (however this isn’t a problem if we are using the woodfire setting as it is extremely fast - 2 minutes per pizza at around 400c). The major problem is the amount of bench space it takes up.
