Pizza oven terms explained

A kitchen oven reaches 250 °C. A Neapolitan pizza wants 450 to 500 °C, and that gap is exactly why you add a separate oven: at that temperature a pizza is done in ninety seconds.

The heat comes from two directions. The stone bakes the base, and the flame rolling along the ceiling bakes the top. That is why a pizza oven is low and wide rather than a box.

A pizza oven does not replace a barbecue, nor the other way round. The shape is low and the mouth small because the heat has to stay in; a roasting joint will not fit, and that is a design choice rather than a shortcoming.

See also: Baking stone, Rolling flame, Maximum temperature

The quoted temperature is what the air inside reaches with everything open and the burner wide out. For Neapolitan you genuinely want it; for a thicker base you bake lower and longer instead.

More important than the peak is whether the oven holds that temperature after a cold pizza goes in. That varies a lot by model and is on nobody’s box.

More degrees stops helping once you are past 500 °C. The base burns before the cheese melts, and you end up deliberately running the oven lower, so the number is a ceiling rather than a target.

See also: Stone temperature, Heat-up time

Gas is ready in fifteen to twenty minutes; wood and charcoal take longer because you have to build a bed first. The quoted time is for the air, not for the stone.

Where a maker states no heat-up time, we say so. We do not fill that in with an estimate.

On gas, add another fifteen minutes on top of the quoted time for the stone. The air gets there before the stone does, and anyone going by the air thermometer launches their first pizza onto a base that is too cold.

See also: Stone temperature, Maximum temperature

A gas oven runs on propane or butane and gives you a dial instead of fire management. The temperature is steady, repeatable and adjustable on the spot, and there is nothing to clear up afterwards.

What you give up is smoke flavour. On a ninety-second pizza that matters less than people think, but it is absent.

A 10-kilo gas bottle lasts a season in normal use. Watch the regulator: Dutch propane runs at 30 or 50 mbar depending on the bottle, and an oven from another country may need a different one.

See also: Wood, Multi-fuel

Burn small, dry hardwood: beech, oak, apple. You feed it while baking, and the temperature moves with what you put in.

Wet or soft wood gives smoke without heat and a bitter taste. Use kiln-dried wood, or wood that has seasoned at least a year.

Reckon on about one chunk per pizza once the oven is up to temperature. Keep a supply within reach and build the fire at the back or to one side, so you keep room at the front to bake in.

See also: Gas, Multi-fuel, Charcoal

Charcoal burns more evenly than wood and needs less minding. A couple of wood chunks alongside still gives the aroma you would burn wood for.

For anyone who wants the flavour but not a whole evening of fire management, this is often the easiest route.

Charcoal reaches the highest temperatures less readily than wood in a pizza oven, because there is no flame licking the dome. For a ninety-second Neapolitan, wood or gas is usually the better choice.

See also: Wood, Multi-fuel

A multi-fuel oven takes a fuel tray for wood and charcoal and a gas burner, and you swap between them. Gas midweek, wood at the weekend.

Check whether the gas burner is included. On some models it is a separate accessory, which changes the price you are comparing.

Swapping fuels takes time and a cold oven. This is not a switch but a few minutes of changeover with parts you have to store somewhere: pleasant for anyone who genuinely uses both, and clutter for anyone who does not.

See also: Gas, Wood, Charcoal

Cordierite tolerates big temperature swings without cracking and gives its heat quickly to the dough. That last part is what cooks and spots a base in ninety seconds.

Thicker is better: a thick stone drops less when a cold pizza lands on it, which is what makes the second pizza as good as the first.

A stone that has been thoroughly soaked needs to dry slowly before you fire it hard again. An hour at low temperature is enough; going straight to full heat turns the water inside to steam and can split it.

See also: Stone temperature, Pizza oven

The oven’s thermometer measures the air. Your base bakes on the stone, which lags while heating and drops the moment a pizza lands on it.

Measure it with an infrared thermometer. Around 400 to 450 °C bakes a Neapolitan base well; above 500 °C it burns before the top is done.

Between two pizzas the stone drops. Give it a minute or two to recover, or launch the next one onto a spot you have not baked on yet. That is why the second pizza is often worse than the first.

See also: Baking stone, Infrared thermometer

In a pizza oven working properly, the flame does not go straight up but curls forward across the dome. That arc radiates downward and is what lifts and spots the rim.

Without it you get a cooked base under a pale top. On wood you steer it by where you build the fire; on gas it is built in.

Too much flame is a problem too. If the arc reaches past the middle, the rim burns before the base is done; turn the burner back or let the fire settle before the next pizza goes in.

See also: Pizza oven, Turning

The side facing the fire bakes far faster than the side away from it. On a ninety-second bake that means four or five turns with a turning peel.

Ovens with a rotating stone take this over. That is the difference between standing over it and simply sliding a pizza in.

Turn with a small round peel and barely lift the pizza: slide and rotate in one motion. Lifting costs heat out of the base, and it is exactly when a pizza slides off the peel.

See also: Rolling flame, Pizza peel

The style these ovens are built for: a soft dough of flour, water, salt and yeast, pressed out by hand so the air moves to the rim, baked very hot and very briefly.

It is soft rather than crisp, and you eat it at once. A Neapolitan pizza that has sat for ten minutes is a different pizza.

The dough wants time. A 24 to 48 hour prove in the fridge gives flavour and a more workable dough than two hours on the counter, and makes hand-stretching considerably easier.

See also: Cornicione, Hydration, Tipo 00

The rim you leave alone while pressing out catches the air in the dough and rises in the oven. The dark blisters on it are called leopard spotting and belong there.

A flat rim usually means the air was rolled out with a pin, or the oven was not hot enough.

Press the dough out from the middle and leave the last two centimetres alone. The air you leave there is what rises in the oven, and a rolling pin removes precisely that air.

See also: Neapolitan pizza, Rolling flame

Sixty per cent hydration is a kilo of flour to six hundred grams of water. More water gives an airier, softer result and a dough that is harder to handle.

Start around 60 per cent. Above 65 it turns sticky, and a pizza that clings to your peel is a pizza that never reaches the oven.

Flour does not absorb the same everywhere. The same 62 per cent feels different with a strong Italian 00 than with ordinary bread flour, so treat the number as a starting point and go by how the dough feels.

See also: Tipo 00, Launching

00 refers to how finely it is milled, not to strength. For Neapolitan you want 00 with enough protein, around 12 to 13 per cent, so the dough handles a long prove and the heat.

Ordinary bread flour works too, but browns faster at 450 °C because it carries more sugars.

Look at the protein figure on the bag, not just at the 00. A 00 meant for biscuits has too little protein for pizza dough, and that is the commonest reason a dough tears while being stretched.

See also: Hydration, Neapolitan pizza

The launching peel is wide and flat; perforated is pleasant because excess flour falls through instead of burning in your oven. The turning peel is small and round.

One peel can be made to work, but then you are turning with the thing you launch with, which is awkward over a 450-degree oven.

A wooden peel lets dough stick less and is therefore pleasant to launch from; metal is thinner and slides better under a baked pizza. If you buy one, take wood to start with.

See also: Launching, Turning

Dust the peel with semolina rather than flour: it acts like ball bearings and burns less readily. Shake the peel before it goes in: if the pizza does not move, it will not come off either.

Top the pizza once it is already on the peel. A topped pizza you still have to lift will stick.

Work fast. A topped pizza sitting on the peel for more than a minute draws moisture and sticks, so top it only once the oven is up to temperature and you can launch straight away.

See also: Pizza peel, Hydration

Point, press, and you know what the stone is at rather than what the air is at. For what it costs, it is the accessory that changes your pizza the most.

Measure the middle of the stone, where the pizza will land, not the edge, which is usually cooler.

Check it reads high enough. Many cheap thermometers stop at 380 °C, which is just below the range where a pizza oven gets interesting; look for one that goes to at least 550 °C.

See also: Stone temperature

Cordierite is porous and absorbs soap, which you then taste in your pizza. Instead run the oven at full temperature for another fifteen minutes: baked-on residue burns to ash you brush away.

Stains and discolouration belong there and need not come off. A used stone looks used.

Turn the stone over when one side gets too dirty. The underside is clean and the heat burns the top out by itself. That saves scrubbing and extends the usable life considerably.

See also: Baking stone

A stone that soaks up water and is then fired fast can crack from the steam forming inside it. A cover keeps the oven and the stone dry between sessions.

If the oven has stood out a winter uncovered, bring the stone up slowly before opening the burner wide.

Let the oven cool completely before the cover goes on. A cover over a warm oven traps moisture rather than keeping it out, which is exactly the problem you bought it to avoid.

See also: Baking stone, Cleaning the stone

When a shop shows "was €549", that is a claim by the party selling the thing, not by the manufacturer. We record it under the shop’s name and repeat it as something they say.

We keep that claim per day. A discount is more often manufactured by raising the reference than by lowering the price, and only a dated record can show it.

Around Black Friday this matters most. A shop that raises its reference in October and shows "40% off" in November is selling at roughly its September price, and that is exactly what a daily series makes visible.

See also: Price verdict

We measure every oven’s price daily and set today against what we saw before. That produces "lowest ever", "sharp", "average" or "dear".

While there are too few measurements, we say so. We never base the verdict on a shop’s struck-through price.

So a new model has no verdict at first. That is not an omission but the point: we would rather say nothing for a month than say something immediately on the strength of three readings.

See also: Reference price