There's nothing quite like a warm and crispy pizza pie pulled straight from a wood fire oven, but few people have the capacity to create such a meal in their own kitchen. Breville is out to change that with a new countertop pizza oven for the home, which combines carefully placed heating elements to recreate the experience of a real brick pizza oven.
Breville's new Pizzaiolo oven relies on the Element IQ system featured in its other countertop appliances, using sensors to direct heat where it's needed for more even cooking. Two incoloy coils create heat inside the oven on either side of a natural corderiete pizza stone, with algorithms dialing the heat up and down in places to create the desired wood-fired finish, complete with lightly charred edges.
The Pizzaiolo can hit 750° F (398 °C) and, according to the Breville, is the first home countertop oven to reach such temperatures. As a result, it says wood-fired style pizzas can be cooked in just two minutes. A dial on the front allows owners to select a preset cooking style, with New York, deep dish, thin and crispy, and frozen pizza among the options.
To achieve these different variations, the coils make adjustments to create different heating effects. For Neapolitan-style pizzas, for example, the Pizzaiolo will create convective heat that bakes toppings without burning them and leaves leopard-spotted charring on the crust. There is also a manual mode if you feel like experimenting with things.
Built to take 12-inch (30-cm) pizzas, the Pizzaiolo comes in a stainless steel body with total dimensions of 18.5 x 18.3 x 10.7 in (47 x 46 x 27 cm). A double-pane heat resistant front window offers a look at your progress, and should also help keep burn incidents to a minimum.
If you've got empty space on your counter begging for a dedicated pizza oven, then your next consideration might be the price. At US$800 the Pizzaiolo is certainly on the costly side for a household appliance, but for some, pizza-making isn't the place to be cutting corners.
Source: Breville
