First, there’s the dough. I always forget that it needs a few hours to rise before assembling a pizza. Even for experienced cooks, rolling out dough can be difficult and tedious, and sometimes, no matter how hard you try, stretching it into a 12-inch pie is impossible.
According to Edward Harder, executive chef at Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue in Kingston, N.Y., pizza makers like me make common mistakes. Here are a few tips to make it easier and unlock better results.
“Always work with room-temperature dough, as cold dough is harder to stretch,” he says. “It’s not impossible, but using room-temperature dough will lend to a better end product.” Also, always properly heat the oven before trying to bake a pizza. “The oven must be hot, or if you are using a pizza stone at home, always remember to preheat the stone beforehand.”
Don’t be surprised if your oven doesn’t meet the temperature requirement for, say, an authentic Neapolitan pizza, because a high heat of around 800° to 900° F is ideal, Harder says. Most standard home ovens reach a max of 500° to 550° F. Also, try not to overload your pizza with too much sauce or too many toppings, he advises.
“Neapolitan pizza is the crown jewel of pizza, and it’s truly something you can’t replicate perfectly in a regular oven,” says Paul Hope, a CR editor and classically trained chef. “It should have a crisp but chewy crust full of gluten and blistered air bubbles, some of which should be slightly charred.”
With Harder’s tips and Hope’s guidance on what makes a great Neapolitan pie, I set out to test four indoor pizza ovens that can be handy when using an outdoor pizza oven just doesn’t work. The pies I made, including several Neapolitan-style pizzas, were pretty darn good, better than anything I’ve ever made in my own ancient oven. I found that a countertop pizza oven can be a good investment if authentic taste is what you crave, but you definitely need a few things to make a mouth-watering pie. Fresh ingredients, a pizza peel (to move pizzas into and out of the oven), and practice are high on my list.
Read on to see what four popular indoor pizza ovens from Ooni, Gourmia, Betty Crocker, and Chefman have to offer and which ones baked pies—frozen and homemade—the best in my real-life tests with my family in our Connecticut kitchen. Note that not all ovens reached the maximum cooking temperatures the companies say they reach. The temperature readings below are from our tests.
