The 4 Greatest Indoor Pizza Ovens, Examined by Meals & Wine

Our Favourite 

High Picks every earned an ideal rating, so selecting a favourite from that group was difficult. The Ooni Volt 12 edged out the Breville Sensible Oven Pizzaiolo merely for its barely cheaper price, however you received’t go flawed with both mannequin when coping with high-heat pizza types.

The Assessments

In our testing lab, we attempt to recreate the buyer expertise by performing the steps a house person would take after buying. Our 4 assessments included setup, baking two pizza sorts, and (the dreaded) cleanup.

Setup: We moved the pizza ovens from a storage compartment to the tabletops, the place we examined them to see how simply a house person may raise and place them. After studying the directions, we timed how lengthy it took to warmth the oven to cooking temperature, recording the deck’s (stone or different cooking floor) and exterior temperatures through an infrared thermometer.

Management: We baked a cheese pizza utilizing store-bought dough and substances on a pizza stone in a traditional oven to match to the pies we baked in pizza ovens.

Cheese Pizza: Utilizing the identical substances because the management pizza, we made a cheese pie and began a stopwatch after we launched the pizza onto the deck. When executed, we pulled the pizza from the oven and recorded the bake time. After we eliminated the pie, we instantly checked the deck’s temperature with an infrared thermometer, then rechecked the deck temperature to fee the oven’s restoration time. We let the completed pizza cool for 3 minutes, then visually in contrast it to the management pizza.

Pizza with Toppings: We repeated the cheese pizza take a look at, including inexperienced peppers and pepperoni to the pie. Once more, we recorded the cooking time, visible comparability after three minutes, and the deck temperature after baking and 5 minutes later to view the restoration time. We additionally collected total impressions of the convenience of use, levels of doneness of the pizza, and total design of every oven.

Cleansing: With all cooking duties, there may be all the time cleanup when the enjoyable is over. We adopted the producer’s directions for cleansing and rated the general expertise.

Scoring: To reach at a remaining rating for every oven, we rated it on a scale of 1 to 5 within the following classes: Design, Ease of Use, Efficiency, and Ease of Cleansing. Efficiency carried essentially the most weight, the place we judged the pizza’s total high quality and the oven’s temperature restoration time.

Components to Think about

Measurement

Don’t base the oven’s dimension capability (how large of a pizza it should maintain) in your capability to deal with a dough ball, in line with Hernandez. The bigger the pizza, the harder it’s to deal with. After some trial and error, most residence cooks get fairly adept with a 12-inch pie, however the problem degree of creating a bigger pie will increase exponentially.

“I imply, it is enjoyable to make 20-inch pizza, however your common residence cook dinner is just not going to have the ability to stretch that out evenly or launch it off of a peel into an oven [without horrible results],” he says. So, stability your capability together with your aspirations and cheap prospects of development. We’re politely saying you don’t purchase a Ferrari to solely drive it to ship pizza.

Heating Parts

There are two forms of warmth to think about in a pizza oven. Ambient warmth is the temperature contained in the oven that largely cooks the toppings, whereas the deck shops and conducts warmth to the crust. Ideally, the deck shops a “pool” of warmth, just like how a forged iron pan heats and distributes evenly. 

You desire a deck that will get scorching so your dough begins to set instantly on contact and shops sufficient warmth that it doesn’t cool considerably from that contact. Whereas that warmth transfers from the deck to the dough, ideally, a backside component replenishes these warmth shops. The perfect-performing ovens we examined had a high and backside component, with the highest component not solely sustaining ambient warmth but in addition restoring warmth to the deck.

Temperature Vary

Excessive warmth isn’t the do-all and end-all, in line with Hernandez. “That is one among my favourite issues to speak about,” he says. He explains that folks have a false impression that prime warmth is the important thing to good pizza when it’s truly solely fascinating for Neapolitan-style pies, for which you need “leoparding” (or darkish recognizing) on the crust. Neapolitan dough is extraordinarily lean (containing little or no fats or oil) and cooks rapidly at excessive temperatures.

There are loads of pizza types on the planet, and you must discover an oven that accommodates the model(s) you wish to make, in line with Hernandez, who bakes his New York-style pies at 550°F. They’re a special model of dough with a 3% fats content material, and the excessive warmth wanted for Neapolitan would scorch the pie earlier than it may cook dinner. When you prefer to alternate between New York and Neapolitan, discover an oven that covers these temperature ranges. When you have a tendency in direction of one or the opposite (or some other model), discover an oven that performs greatest on the temperature to your most popular dough kind.

Care and Cleansing

One of many nice issues about pizza ovens is that they function in a temperature vary that makes them nearly self-cleaning. Any spills on the deck are simple to wash for those who scrape out the worst of them with the scraper finish of a grill brush earlier than they set, then let the remnants burn off earlier than brushing them with the metal bristle facet of the comb. Spills on the door lip are equally simple to wash. Wipe them with a moist fabric held in tongs or whereas sporting a grill glove. The moisture from the material will flip to steam, rapidly eradicating the spill from the oven.

Different Indoor Pizza Ovens We Examined

Robust Contenders

Hamilton Seaside 12-Inch Pizza Maker ($78 at Dwelling Depot)

This entry-level pizza oven was very simple to make use of. It spun the pizzas because it cooked, which helped keep away from scorching spots throughout the 14 and 17-minute cooks. There was restricted temperature management from a numbered dial and an aluminum pan moderately than a stone for baking. We’d recommend it for dorm room or small kitchen house use, as the tip product was excellent, simply not quick-cooking. 

Granitestone PIEZANO Pizza Oven ($127 at Amazon)

The PIEZANO is a waffle maker-like pizza oven that heated rapidly and made respectable pies in a bit of over 4 minutes. Nevertheless, it lacks detailed management, and its temperature setting is marked in 200-degree increments, affecting its versatility.

Chefman Dwelling Slice Electrical Indoor Pizza Oven ($285 at Amazon)

The Dwelling Slice has high and backside parts that support in fast heating and restoration. It ran a bit of too scorching, giving some OK outcomes that will have been nice had it not cooked the outside too rapidly.

Betty Crocker Countertop Pizza Maker ($50 at Amazon)

This providing from Betty Crocker is a low-temperature oven that produced higher than common pizzas in 12 and quarter-hour. There are not any temperature controls, so that you received’t be making high-temperature pizzas in it. As a substitute, the corporate markets this pizza maker as a multi-functional cooker for quesadillas and omelets, as effectively.

What Did not Make the Listing

In a rarity for a pool of take a look at topics, not one of the electrical pizza ovens we examined scored poorly. Those that didn’t make the listing had slight shortcomings, which might not be actual dealbreakers to you. The Presto Pizzazz Plus Rotating Pizza Oven ($50 at Amazon) lacked any actual temperature management apart from deciding on the highest, backside, or each heating parts. It gave a properly executed crust in about 18 minutes, however the toppings had been underdone. The Industrial Chef 12-Inch Countertop Pizza Maker is a low-temperature (comparatively) oven that likewise lacked detailed temperature management and was troublesome to wash, as many components weren’t detachable. For the Courant 12-Inch Pizza Maker ($50 at Amazon), temperature management appears like an off/on button, and it produced inconsistent outcomes with each pies we made. Lastly, the Gemelli Dwelling Pizza Oven ($370 at Amazon), which has 5 presets for varied types, had some temperature inconsistencies that left our Neapolitan-style pizzas a bit of soggy within the crust.

Our Experience

• Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and meals author with 4 many years of expertise within the meals business, together with a reluctant stint as a pizza maker. His written work seems in Meals & Wine, Tasting Desk, Severe Eats, and different publications.
• For this piece, he consulted Joshua Hernandez, chef and proprietor of Ladybug Pizza on Orcas Island, Washington.