Its all the craze now, having your own pizza oven. An oven that can get to 800 degrees and cook a pizza in as little as a minute. Putting aside the fact that most, probably 90+ percent of these ovens will never get used after the first couple of tries are they worth the cost? Definitely not! But if you're willing to put in the work( you almost have to be retired) I think the pizza is better, because you're eating it straight out of the oven and you're ingredients should be your standards.
Here's my story. First of all I'm a retired chef, so I have a lot of cooking knowledge and a lot of time to waste. I'm guessing that it takes me half the time of what the average person would spend on making their own pizza. When I Started looking for an oven I set my parameters as such: It can't be $800, because how do you justify an a piece of equipment that just makes pizza for $800. 2nd, it needs to fit on my outdoor kitchen counter (24") 3rd, it has to have a door, so I can use it to cook other foods, like fish or breads. Oh and it needs to be able to heat to at least 600 degrees.
So here's what fit the bill! It's called a Woody oven and its manufactured in England (and you know what great food England is known for. Own wait, not much), but it got decent reviews. The build looked good. It had distribution in the US. It has a door, and options for wood, coal, propane or natural gas. Oh, it only costs $400 with the gas fuel option too. Look I realize that thats still a lot of money for pizza, but I felt its was the best option. Interested already? check it out here. To date I have only used the wood burning as fuel and it works great for the average group(6 people so far). Its a bit more work keeping the fire burning because the wood capacity is small, but its a personal /portable oven with just so much space.
So, does it make a good pizza? Yes and no in the original layout( Do all Barger's have to tinker?) What I found was that it heats up well, often easily exceeding Its 500 degree advertised temperature in under 40 minutes and if you get good at reading the fire and its parameters for the space allowed you can keep the oven hot for a few pizzas. Where the problem starts is after pizza number one. The oven stays plenty hot, but the floor cools rapidly causing the pizza to be cooked on top, but with an under cooked crust. It didn't matter how hot I got the oven, I had to allow for 10-15 minutes in between each pizza to get the oven floor back up to an acceptable temperature. So this was the challenge. Everything else worked just great and if I was only cooking 1 pizza, this would be the end of this story. But Barb and I entertain, so it had to be able to make more pizzas in succession than 1 or 2. I had to fix the floor heat retention issue.
As I said early that this is listed as a "portable" oven, which means it can be carried( it even comes with a carrying bag) or the weight has to be a criteria. Most of these portable pizza ovens use a thin stone or ceramic tile floor that relies on radiant heat from above to heat the floor, but to keep the oven light they aerate the stone/tile, and by doing so it lessens the weight, but also lessens the ability to retain the heat of the oven. Once your pizza blocks the radiant heat from above the floor begins to cool.
So I replaced the stone floor in this oven with a quarter inch of steel over the entire oven, so now the fire box also sits on top of the steel plate ( the stone did not), and the results have been amazing! Whether you can now call this portable is debatable. The steel added almost 20 pounds to the oven. I last cooked 6 pizzas with out any floor heat lost at all! And if my dough skills were better we would host a larger group, but probably use the gas attachment to help me keep the fire on.
So, I kinda recommend this product? Mmmm, not sure. It's great for the price comparatively. There are other cheaper ovens out there that might do just as well with a steel floor, but this one definitely does. So get out there and cook more pizzas!
Need some dough ideas? My two go to's are 72 hour dough from Bakers Steel and and a lower hydration 24 hour dough also from Bakers Steel. The 24 hourGas is a bit easier to work with.
Would love to get your input, especially if you have a oven and you like how it works.
Tim
Email: Mail@heronparadise.net
