Politics
Best pizza oven to buy now including portable and BBQ toppers
WE’VE scoured the web for the best pizza oven around, whether you’re looking for a portable option or a barbecue topper.
With a wide range of price options, these devices will help you take your homemade slice to the next level.
How do you find the right pizza oven for you?
There are three main kinds of pizza ovens – portable, barbecue-top or stand alone – and which one you pick will depend on whether you want to use it indoors or outdoors and how big your garden, patio or even balcony is.
You also need to think about the type of fuel it’ll use and whether this will affect the flavour of your pizza.
And finally, there’s the price. Pizza ovens can vary a lot in terms of price depending on whether or not it’s portable, and the “per use” price will vary too depending on what type of fuel you use.
It’s easy to make pizzas in conventional ovens, especially if you’re just popping in a shop-bought one.
But having a dedicated pizza oven means you can recreate the pizzeria-style crust that’s so hard to achieve otherwise.
That’s because pizza ovens are designed to cook pizzas from all directions and at much higher temperatures.
The dough is in direct contact with the extremely hot base, which helps the crust to form and the dough to cook through without drying it out.
At the same time, the roof of the oven helps to direct the heat to the topping to flash cook it so there’s no risk of the base burning while the topping is left raw.
You can get pizza stones for conventional ovens to help you achieve that crust of course, but they take an hour or more to heat up properly whereas dedicated pizza ovens might only take 20 minutes and then another couple of minutes for the actual cooking.
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1. Dellonda portable pizza oven
- (AD) Dellonda portable pizza oven, £249.98 from Amazon – buy here
This portable pizza oven will heat up to 380C in around 15 minutes and can cook a 14inch pizza in just 60 seconds.
You can use charcoal, hardwood or wood pellets with it, and there’s a fuel feed at the back that you can use to keep the fire going between cooking.
It comes with a Cordierite pizza stone to help you achieve that perfect crust, and a stainless steel peel (the pizza paddle) to move the pizza.
2. La Hacienda BBQ pizza oven
- (AD) La Hacienda BBQ pizza oven, £114.99 from Amazon – buy here
This pizza oven from La Hacienda is made for using on top of gas or charcoal range barbeques.
It’s super easy to use – you just need to put the removable pizza stone on top of the barbecue’s grill and then put the stainless steel hood over the top.
The oven will be pizza ready in about 10 minutes and there’s a dial on the top to tell you when it’s at the right temperature.
3. La Hacienda steel multi-function pizza oven
- La Hacienda steel multi-function pizza oven, £140 from Argos – buy here
An alternative from La Hacienda is this stylish multi-function pizza oven.
It comes with the stand and grill, so you can use it without the pizza stone as a barbecue.
There’s also a temperature dial on the front to let you know when it’s easy to use.
4. Bullet wood-fired pizza oven
- Bullet wood-fired pizza oven, £169.99 from Very – buy here
This wood-fired oven with folding legs is great for smaller gardens.
There’s a fuel gate at the back so it’s easy to add more wood when cooking, while in the front there’s a stainless steel door that you can close to reduce heat loss.
It comes with a pizza stone but you’ll have to buy your own peel to use with the oven.
5. Pizzacraft Deluxe pizza oven kit
- (AD) Pizzacraft Deluxe pizza oven kit, £167.52 from Amazon – buy here
This pizza oven kit is designed to transform your existing kettle barbecue into a pizza oven.
It will fit 18 inch and 22.5 inch grills and comes with a stainless steel kettle converter, a 15 inch Cordierite pizza stone, a 13 inch folding aluminium peel and a charcoal fence.
The time it takes to heat up will vary depending on the type of fuel and how powerful your barbecue is.
Portable, barbecue-top or stand alone: which pizza oven is best?
The three main types of pizza ovens are portable, barbecue-top and stand alone ones.
Portable ones are designed to be small enough to move around, for example if you want to take it to a holiday home. Because of this, they tend to be a bit more expensive.
Usually there’s a main oven chamber on top of a small stand, plus a chimney. The fuel is at the back of the chamber, like the ones you see in pizzerias, and the pizza goes in the front.
There’s some assembly required but you can also put it away in storage after use.
You can also get electric pizza ovens, which are for indoor use and are generally much smaller.
There are two types of electric pizza ovens – ones that look like a smaller version of a regular oven and ones that look like a pan with a hood over the top.
Barbecue-top pizza ovens involve a base, a hood and sometimes a converter that goes over your regular barbecue. You can also get these as part of a barbecue set. Your pizza is cooked using the heat from the barbecue, which can vary a lot.
These devices are generally the cheapest and they’re easy to assemble and store, but it can take a little longer to heat up and get the temperature right.
If you’re buying one that doesn’t come with your barbecue, double check the measurements to make sure it will fit on your existing grill.
Finally, there’s the stand alone pizza oven. It’s a serious investment as you’ll need to build it from scratch and of course you’ll need space in your garden for it. If you move house, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to take it with you so that’s worth bearing in mind too.
Which is better, gas, electric, charcoal or wood-fired pizza oven?
It’s much easier to control the temperatures on gas and electric pizza ovens. And as you can turn them off at the flick of a switch, there’s no wasted fuel either.
Charcoal or wood-fired pizza ovens are better for flavour, adding an extra layer of smokiness to your pizza.
However, it can be more wasteful if you only want to cook one or two pizzas, as you still need to put in the same amount of fuel as if you were cooking more to get the temperature up, so these may be best if you have a big family or want to entertain regularly.
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If you’re making pizzas by hand, we’ve rounded up some of the best options for rolling pins that can make rolling out bases easier.
Also check out our review of the Cuisinart Precision SM50BU 5.2l stand mixer, which is very handy mixing making dough.
For a smaller alternative, there’s also the Morphy Richards Mixstar.
