There are lots of ways to try to make pizza cooked at home taste more like it’s actually from a restaurant. But it never really works. No matter how fancy your ingredients, how flawless your tossing technique, there’s a problem: Your oven doesn’t get hot enough. Even your broil setting is between 500 and 550 degrees Fahrenheit. With the ability to reach 750 degrees Fahrenheit, the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo comes closer to the 700 to 800 degrees of commercial models.
Though we got to see the Pizzaiolo in action at CES 2019-adjacent event, Food Tech Live, the oven is already on the market. A few years ago, we drooled over GE Appliance’s Monogram Pizza Oven, which gets up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit and has all kinds of smart capabilities. Drool was all we could do for that built-in oven, as it costs $12,200. Breville’s countertop oven is closer to (but still out of range of) our budget at $800.
With that price, you certainly have to love pizza to let Breville’s appliance live on your counter. It’s fairly large, at 18.5 x 18.3 x 10.7 inches, and it can fit a pie that’s 12 inches in diameter. That may not sound like enough to supply your pizza party, but here’s the thing: The Pizzaiolo can bake your Neapolitan-style in two minutes. At the Food Tech Live event, World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani was using the Breville to cook up some. The first thing we did before taking a bite was flip it over to check for the telltale black spots on the bottom. There was definitely some char.
If Neopolitan isn’t your thing, the Breville also has settings for New York, thin and crispy, pan, and frozen. You can also set how light or dark you want your pizza.
While the oven takes a while to cool back down, the outside top stays cool enough to touch. We watched one of the chefs do a hand test, laying her palm flat for several seconds without flinching. For added safety, the stone slides out a bit when you open door, so you don’t have to stick your hand all the way inside to remove your molten pie.
It’s true that the Pizzaiolo costs way more than a pizza stone, but from what we’ve seen, the results are far superior as well.
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