The Great American Pizza Ritual

Some people love the ritual of going to the pizzeria restaurant with the red and white checkered tablecloths and candles in Chianti bottles. They enjoy watching their pizza being cooked in the old stone cookware pizza oven and savor fragrant smells of tomato juice, cheese and dough filling the air.

Others prefer to sit in their living room and watch the latest movie, getting up only long enough to answer the door to the pizza boy bringing their pizza from the nearby pizzeria. In both cases, if you want good pizza, it has to be cooked in a commercial pizza oven. But, different types of restaurants, which offer different services - atmosphere or speed - require different types of commercial pizza ovens to fulfill your needs.

Features Of The Restaurant Pizza Oven

Pizzas require very high temperature to achieve good texture and crunchy crust. Regular oven cannot achieve this with the help of pizza stones, but any commercial establishment that offers pizza to their clients needs commercial pizza ovens. They can be made of brick, stone, stainless steel or other materials and come in many different sizes. The main requirement is that they reach, and maintain, high temperature, for the continuous baking of pizzas. Some small commercial pizza ovens are small and can fit only few pizzas at the time and can be placed on the countertop. The others are large, and have a number of stackable racks to cook a large number of pizzas at the same time. Outdoor pizza ovens also exist for use in hot and cold climes.

Pick One Based On Needs

Restaurants that cook relatively small number of pizzas need a small or medium pizza oven. If they want to create attractive ambiance, having attractive wood burning brick pizza oven opened to customers is their best option. Pizzerias which mostly bake pizza for fast delivery need large, conveyor type commercial pizza ovens. The large commercial pizza ovens are also fairly automated and have gauges which control temperature, the cooking time and the range of other features.

Pick Between Wood Fired Or Gas Power

Most traditional Italian restaurants would not use any other type of commercial pizza ovens but true and tested wood burning pizza ovens. There are ovens on the market that use mix of wood and gas in order to have the best of both worlds: smoky woody flavor and convenience of gas. Gas and electrical commercial pizza ovens are convenient and easy to clean and maintain, and are suitable if they remain in the kitchen and not in front of guests. The decision on the type of commercial pizza ovens to use depends very much on the type of restaurant, but also on the price of electricity, availability of gas and of good hard burning wood.

Save Money By Buying Second-hand Ovens

Since commercial pizza ovens are fairly pricey (they can reach $30,000), it is easy to be tempted to buy used one. If you know who you are buying from, how long has it been used and why is it being sold, go for it and you might save quite a lot of money. The main problem with used commercial pizza ovens is the lack of guarantee, so if something goes wrong, you will be the one to pay for it.

Famous Brands

Most manufacturers of pizza ovens produce residential as well as commercial pizza ovens. The big names are Forno Bravo, Bakers Pride, Attias, Blodgett, and many others. Make sure that you buy your commercial pizza ovens from a reputable restaurant supplier, preferably the one you had previous dealings with, to be sure that you will have good service and even better support once your oven is working. Pick up some pizza peels while you're there.