Pizza "Oven" cooker thingie

I've heard people rave about them, but not had the opportunity to experience one first-hand. Anyone got one / got a friend who cooked you a pizza on one?

Supposedly has a stone base and gets up to about 400C, and will even cook a supermarket pizza to taste nearly as good as a restaurant one, and WAY better than using a conventional oven.

Here's an example



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ferrari-G10006-Delizia-Pizza-Oven/dp/B002VA4CDI

 

New one on me K.

When I saw the title I thought you'd built one a la Ray Mears stylee

 

Just curious but what are your motives for buying one of these?

I used to buy frozen pizzas for Mr Jane all the time and was horrified at the salt content. So recently decided to make my own. You can buy the dough mix for less than 2 quid and it tastes just as good as the real thing. I do mine in the oven though.

 

The only pizzas I'm raving about at the moment are the Dr Oetker Ristorante pizzas with the heart shaped symbol on the pack, meaning they contain codes to get both £1.50 + £1.00 printable vouchers. http://www.pizzaristorante.co.uk/

After buying one and printing the £1.50 voucher, you can then go to Morrisons or Asda http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/tesc...s/Dr_Oetker_Ristorante_Funghi_Pizza_365g.html and get one for free as they are on offer for £1.49/£1.50 respectively. You might need to buy half a carrot with your pizza at Morrisons as they get a bit 'funny' about giving you 1p out the till.

Then you can print more vouchers from the code in what you've just bought and go and get more free pizzas and keep doing so until your freezer's full! You can also email unused codes to your kids at Uni so they can print it out and then keep buying/printing/buying until their freezers are full, then they email their last code back so you can carry on.

That's what we've done as it's rather a nice pizza. Free pizzas taste much better than ones you have to pay for.

 

Well ... if the claims are to be believed a Pizza cooked in one of them is like night-and-day compared to one cooked in a regular oven. I'm going to remain sceptical until I find one (preferably several!!) person that I know who has experienced one and can confirm the marketing hype!

Agree with you about salt etc. in shop-bought Pizzas (well ... that goes for any ready-meal). We make-our-own if we want a Pizza, but we do have a few supermarket ones in the freezer for emergency rations when we come home unexpected late / whatever and don't have time / inclination to cook something properly. I figure that once in a while doesn't matter ... and we eat proper, home cooked, freshly prepared food 90% of the time, or more, with veg straight from the garden so forget the salt ... let alone the pesticides and other chemicals! ... on those

 

Oh we do that all the time but with beans on toast instead.

We also don't have a massive freezer (most of it's filled with raspberry anyway)

To me unless you have a proper pizza oven it will never be the same. Its like a tandoori oven for me. I would love to be able to cook my own nann breads but you need that oven in order to.

 

I'm firmly in the make your own camp here and use a pizza stone. In fact, here's my "well seasoned" stone.....................

It's 38cm in diameter.

My two tricks are;
1] heat the stone well before putting the pizza on it. This involves building the pizza on greaseproof paper, sliding it onto the hot (and floured) stone and then rolling the paper out from under it before putting in the oven. Takes me no more than 20 seconds now.
2] drain the mozzarella well and pat the slices dry on kitchen towel.

It also cooks homemade pasties perfectly too.

 

That Pizza stone do you put in the oven or on a hob to heat up?

 

My Mum cooked me a Pizza complete with the polystyrene base attached once.

 

I put it in the oven whilst the oven is warming up. It takes a while to get that seasoned. Never wash it - just scrape any bits off and wipe with a damp cloth.
As you make your own dough have you tried adding dried rosemary or nigella seeds to it? Worth a go - I like it.

 

Stepson does that too!

 

In Wales, @Spruce will probably correct me here, they are called bakestones, passed from generation to generation, for making Welsh cakes, and can be used on oven or hob.

 

Not sure that mine is hob proof. Certainly not going to try!!
The passing it on deal makes sense as it just gets better with use. Might look unsightly, but a thoroughly good tool.

 

Stones are readily available e.g.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pizza-Baking-Stone-inches-delivery/dp/B0039S44TI

but whilst I am sure they help I don't think they will get hot enough in the oven to achieve best effect

We have friends nearby who have a Pizza oven in their garden, and they make truly delicious Pizzas, but its a major performance to create a fire in the oven several hours before you want a meal ...

Folk on other forums (except ... I don't know them very well, hence why I asked here ) say that Pizza from the gadget above is indistinguishable from proper Pizza oven cooked ones ... I think in part that may be because the gadget heats up to 400C?

With your building skills JJ you could make one? Kits (for the oven part itself) are available [not exactly cheap but nor is a decent gas or electric oven] and then you could build a nice brick/whatever surround

I have no idea if these people are any good, it was the first one up on a Google search. Looks much like the one our friends have (but I expect they are all much of a muchness - if anyone is actually contemplating it I could ask what make our friends bought)

http://www.thestonebakeovencompany.co.uk/our-ovens/


From table top:


To rendered:


up to something like this:




By the by, our friends put some Granite offcuts around theirs, brilliant for preparing pizzas on and serving other food from.