Inferno Knowledge Base
What’s the Best Material For a Pizza Oven? – Brick vs Steel
When it comes to building that perfect outdoor kitchen, one thing you shouldn’t forget would be your pizza oven! They’re perfect for getting to enjoy the great outdoors while getting to eat one of the best foods of all time. However, there is one thing that creates a lot of questions, and that’s the type of pizza oven you should even get in the first place. Believe it or not, the choice between steel vs. brick is actually fairly important. Sure, you could just buy the first one you see, but knowing the best material for pizza oven is going to make a massive difference!
In fact, knowing the differences between the wood-fired ovens that exist such as a brick pizza oven versus a steel pizza oven is even going to impact your experience with your outdoor kitchen altogether. You deserve to have the best experience when making a pizza, so let’s dive into these two so you can figure out the best material for pizza oven for you and your family!
What Makes a Good Pizza Oven?
A good pizza oven can take your home-cooked pizza to restaurant-quality status. This is especially true for Neapolitan-style pizza, which requires high heat and a perfectly cooked crust. Like an oven, there are aspects that you’re going to want to look closely into to ensure that you’re getting exceptional quality from your final product, your pizza. Let’s take a look at the key aspects that need to go into creating a good pizza oven.
Performance
The performance isn’t only geared towards pizzerias but should be considered a very important aspect for everyone. For starters, you want the pizza to be made with high-quality material such as brick or even steel. A material like one of these is needed to keep the heat safe inside so no potential hazards can happen. On top of that, you need to think about the timing. Ideally, a good-performing pizza oven should be able to cook a good-sized pizza in no longer than ten minutes. A regular convection oven and a pizza oven are not the same; their performance for cooking the pizzas is entirely different, which is why everyone can benefit from a good pizza oven.
Design
Does the design of the pizza oven actually matter? In terms of the best material for outdoor pizza ovens, does it actually matter? Absolutely! The design of a good pizza oven is critical to delivering the best results. It should be compact enough to fit into an outdoor kitchen (or home kitchen) and retain heat at high temperatures while cooking the bottom of your pizzas evenly. You need to keep in mind that design is more than aesthetics; the material for a pizza oven is a part of the equation too.
Longevity
When it comes to baking pizzas in your outdoor cookery, reliability and longevity are paramount. We understand the importance of having an oven that is built to last. Our steel pizza ovens have a proven track record of longevity, far exceeding the standard five-year lifespan. To demonstrate our confidence in their durability, we proudly offer a two-year guarantee. We believe in providing you with a pizza oven that will serve you for many years to come, ensuring countless delicious pizza-making experiences.
What's the Difference Between a Steel and Brick Pizza Oven?
Since the two main pizza ovens on the market that are not conventional ovens would be the stainless steel pizza oven and the brick pizza oven, are there truly any differences between the two? Just as there are differences between baking stones, there are differences between high-heat-fired pizza ovens as well. One of the biggest differences between the brick and steel pizza would be the fact that the stainless steel pizza oven just doesn’t retain as much heat as a brick oven does. It’s also not able to hold onto the heat as long as a brick pizza oven can, either.
While a stainless steel pizza oven is able to gain heat very quickly (that’s to heat reacting to metal), it does mean that it will lose heat just as fast. Needless to say, when it comes to heat retention for cooking, you’re going to want perfection. Does heat retention matter? Yes, the better the retention heat, the more evenly your pizza is going to cook. When it comes to a pizza, you want to make sure that all sides are cooked evenly from top to bottom. The last thing you want is the crust to be burnt while the top part of the pizza is barely cooked at all. So brick is the perfect option for this!
When it comes to portability, a steel pizza oven stands out. If you need to move the oven from one point to another over a short distance, a steel pizza oven is the ideal choice. You won't have to concern yourself with investing in a fantastic outdoor oven, only for it to be static forever. This is where stainless steel pizza ovens truly shine, offering you the significant advantage of easier mobility. On the other hand, brick pizza ovens lack any portability
Which Pizza Oven is Best? - What's the Best Material For a Pizza Oven?
When it comes to steel vs. brick pizzas, there are some other aspects that are very important to keep in mind. While retaining heat is one of them, let’s take a closer look at how you can better determine which type of pizza oven would work best for your outdoor cooking needs.
Efficiency
For starters, when it comes to cooking anything, you need something that’s efficient and can cook your food in a timely manner. For pizza ovens, the maximum you want to wait for a pizza to cook would be ten minutes. The whole point is to have a different cooking experience than a pizza stone and a conventional oven (which takes 15 to 25 minutes on average to cook a pizza). But there are other things you want to think about. For starters, how quickly can heat transfer everywhere in the pizza oven? How long will you need to wait for the pizza oven to be hot enough for cooking?
Since heat reacts to metal, steel is an excellent heat conductor meaning that this can be a great option for quickly cooking pizzas. While it’s true that steel pizza ovens lose their heat quickly, they gain heat significantly faster than a brick pizza oven does. So if you’re hosting a party and you have a lot of pizzas you need to cook up, then you can count on a steel pizza to get the job done for you fast; just have a few minutes worth of patience in between. Plus, since it heats up so quickly, it’s about to give a crispier base, meaning more consistent results.
Maintenance and Longevity
There are a lot of aspects to put into consideration when it comes to expanding the longevity of a pizza oven, and one of them would be the maintenance itself and how effective that is. It’s so important to keep a pizza oven clean, it’s one of the main aspects of longevity, and it’s going to help keep the pizza cooking evenly too. Overall, stains and debris from the ash can have a way of affecting the taste and the look of your pizza. It just makes it unappetizing overall.
For starters, when it comes to brick ovens, creosote buildup can happen, which is a major fire hazard. It’s not the case for stainless steel pizza ovens, fortunately, but one thing to keep in mind for stainless steel pizza ovens is the fact that they can’t rust. Overall, with the right care and maintenance work, both types of pizza ovens look fabulous and work for years on end.
Portability: an Outdoor Pizza Oven that Can Be Used Anywhere
Does portability matter? Well, it’s going to depend on the person. While having outdoor cookery is nice, one negative aspect would be its lack of portability, specifically something large like a brick pizza oven. If you’re someone who plans on moving in the future, then a brick pizza oven may be a bad purchase. You can’t transport it, so where it stays is permanent. Even if you wanted to move it somewhere else, like another part of your garden, you can’t. This isn’t a problem for a steel pizza oven. You can move it wherever you like and even pack it with you for camping or picnics.
Appearance and Aesthetic
This is all going to depend on each individual and whether or not appearances matter. But if you want to create a gorgeous magazine-worthy kitchen, then it’s safe to say that the appearance matters as this is going to help you fit the aesthetic that you’re going for. So, are you after a more rustic appearance that a brick pizza oven offers, or are you after something sleek and modern that a stainless steel pizza oven has? Regardless of your preferred aesthetic, it’s easier for steel pizza ovens to blend in rather than their brick counterparts.
Which One is Right for You?
In the end, it’s going to come down to personal preference. While that may be the case, you’re going to want to consider having something long-lasting, easy to maintain, efficient, aesthetically pleasing, and portable. If you’re looking into all of these aspects and prioritise them greatly, then the steel pizza oven is going to be the perfect choice for you.
Bottomline
Some people love the old-fashion rustic appeal that a brick pizza oven offers, while others are after the efficiency and modernity that steel pizza ovens pack. Steel ovens are perfect for sleek outdoor kitchens or families who want to have pizzas while they’re out camping or traveling. In the end, if you’re wanting instant pizza gratification, then don’t look over the portability aspect that you can get from a steel pizza.
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