Pizza is one of the best food items that is loved by almost everyone. People of all age groups love hogging over this Italian food. Some people enjoy cooking pizza more than eating one. To cook the best Italian pizza, it is most important to choose the right pizza oven. It is the most important step that you must follow when you’re about to cook your favorite pizza. Read this post till the end to know more about choosing the right pizza oven.
How to choose a good pizza oven?
If you are searching for a good pizza oven, you have to make a very crucial choice between a brick and steel oven. You can just choose at random but if you don’t know the difference between both ovens, your pizza-making experience depends on the type of oven you choose. The most commonly used pizza ovens are brick pizza ovens and stainless pizza ovens. These two are the most widely used pizza ovens which are easy to use. To choose any one out of these ovens, you must know how both of them work.
If you end up choosing the wrong oven, your pizza-making session will be disturbed. However, this post is here to provide all the information that you need for choosing a proper pizza oven to bake your pizza. Before knowing which oven will be better for you, you must know both the oven types and the pros and cons of both.
How do Brick pizza ovens work?
- A conventional brick pizza oven works upon the thermal weight and has heat retention. To use it easily, when you’re lighting the fire in a pizza oven made up of brick, the heat absorbency of the structure of the oven is stored and shown while you cook.
- Brick ovens can work properly to cook as they have a higher thermal mass. This indicates their potential for absorbing and storing heat energy.
- It will require too much thermal energy and time for heating a brick pizza oven in the right way.
How to cook in a brick pizza oven?
When it is time for you to start cooking at the required temperature, your pizza base will be cooked from underneath by the heat of the fire. And toppings can be cooked with the help of the heat that is stored and emitted out by bricks, assuring both consistent cooking and high temperatures.
The conventional dome located at the top of your pizza oven helps the procedure by the reflection of heat back at the topmost level of pizza. However, this higher thermal mass comes along with two important drawbacks too. Firstly, as mentioned, the brick pizza ovens need a very long time to make it 33°C needed to make the perfect Italian pizza.
You can just look at a pre-heat duration of 30-60 minutes based on the size of the oven you are using. Also, if you want a handy pizza oven, the brick will not be a good choice.
Brick ovens can be used as good fixtures due to their high weight. Several brick ovens may also need a curing procedure, which means that lighting can progress with the larger fire in a few days to drive moisture from the bricks thoroughly so that cracking can be avoided.
You must also take care to protect your brick oven from the elements as cold temperatures and moisture can start eroding the brickwork and cause thermal stress for cracking the oven when you light it up.
How are Stainless steel pizza ovens different from Brick pizza ovens?
As mentioned above, the brick ovens work on thermal mass, stainless steel pizza ovens work with heat reflection. The steel can heat up fast and is a good reflector as well as a heat conductor. There is no curing needed for steel ovens, so you can start cooking instantly after you buy one. One of the biggest advantages of this oven is that they need very less time to get heated up.
The price that you need to pay for this element of gratification is that there is no thermal mass of steel and it can cool down real quick. Rapid cooling means that you will have to re-heat the pizza oven slightly in between the cooking pizzas or take the risk of toppings and the base of cooking at different temperatures. The best part is that the process of reheating is quick.
If you’re looking for a portable pizza-making oven, steel will be a good choice. Dissimilar to brick ovens, steel pizza ovens don’t have to be a permanent option added to your kitchen. Several stainless steel pizza ovens are constructed on a wheeled base, so you can roll them back easily into a garage or covered area to safeguard them from these elements.
You will also find a small, countertop pizza oven made out of stainless steel. Steel ovens are very easy to move and are a good option if you have less time to preheat your oven but they are not as aesthetic looking like a conventional brick oven.
Which oven is ideal for cooking pizza?
Cooking pizza in an easy-to-operate oven with the help of wood being used as fuel is an unpredictable procedure. Various woods, pizza floors, and different types of ovens give out the variables that are not possible to point to just one construction material and consider it better than the rest.
You can cook a semolina pizza in a brick oven as it will be quite different from another flour pizza with maple even if you cook both of them in a single oven. When saying that, when you have to choose between brick and steel, there are two important factors you should consider.
Different factors to consider when choosing a pizza oven
A pizza oven is an important requirement to cook pizzas and if you’re a pizza person, you just can’t do it without a pizza oven. There are many factors you need to consider when choosing the right pizza oven such as temperature, convenience, and other factors. You can choose your pizza oven based on various factors like:
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Convenience
The first crucial factor is convenience. Brick ovens need a long time to heat up, and also need to be cured prior you can start cooking in these ovens. They also require higher protection from elements. You will not be able to take them to the cookout of your friend without a vehicle to carry them on.
Whereas steel ovens can be heated fast and you can start using them instantly after purchasing and some of them also have a wheel that contributes to easy portability. So, as far as convenience is a factor, steel ovens are going to top the chart.
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Consistency
The next important factor to consider is consistency. Brick ovens can retain a lot of heat so if you want to cook too many pizzas at once, you don’t have to stop the process to reheat them. They can even have a cooking environment that will be more consistent, particularly in areas with cold climates, and die to high thermal mass.
Steel ovens end up losing heat just as quickly as they acquire heat, so you don’t need to keep shoveling your street party in the worth of the pizzas through it without a bit of reheating.
Brick oven or stainless steel oven?
For an overall sum up, brick ovens are a very good option for people who have a lot of time as well as patience. You must have a lot of patience for dealing with their lengthy preheat time and adequate hunger pangs to be willing to cook too many pizzas. Some people mostly prefer the rustic appearance of brick to the advanced lines of all steel ovens.
Steel ovens are the best if you want a portable and easily movable oven as they can be heated up fast, which indicates the fact that they have instant gratification for pizzas, but they can cool down quickly and this means that if you want to cook a lot of pizzas at once, the process is not fiddly with the right brick oven. Both of these ovens have their pros and cons.
If you consider any one of these benefits as important then, you can choose a brick pizza oven. If you have a brick or steel pizza oven, you can try out both of them to see how they work and which oven gives you the best kind of pizza that you need to savor your mouth.
Final Verdict
That’s all you need to know about choosing the right pizza oven. Brick pizza ovens and stainless pizza ovens both are good for you if you enjoy making pizzas. However, considering a few crucial factors, it is sure that stainless steel ovens are more convenient to make pizzas. If you’re looking for a pizza oven that is portable and easy to move, you must choose the stainless steel pizza oven. There are different options you can avail yourself in terms of stainless steel pizza oven and you must choose the one that is suitable for you.
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