4 Reasons to Include a Pizza Oven in Your Outdoor Kitchen in Mechanicsburg, PA
Pretty much everyone has a backyard grill, but not everyone has an outdoor pizza oven—despite the widespread popularity of pizza pies. You may think your indoor oven is good enough, but you may be in for a surprise: a pizza oven is much better. Here are four reasons to include a pizza oven in your outdoor kitchen in Mechanicsburg, PA.
Perfect Pizza Every Time
If you’re a diehard pizza fan, you know that a pizza with a crispy crust is not only awesome—to prevent the hot, gooey mess of a collapsing pizza slice—but difficult to achieve. Quite simply, a conventional oven isn’t going to give you a perfect pizza. First, conventional ovens, with the exception of commercial ovens, don’t reach temperatures high enough to cook a pizza quickly. Home ovens max out at around 500 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not enough to cook a pizza fast enough to preserve moisture in the toppings while delivering a perfect crust. A pizza oven can reach 700 degrees Fahrenheit, which means even a thick crust pizza can cook in less than five minutes. Not only that, but wood fired pizza ovens enhance food flavors—often adding a bit of a smoky flavor that you can’t achieve in a home oven.
More Baking Options
Your pizza oven offers you many more baking options than you may think. A pizza oven allows you three distinct baking styles: high heat, baking, and roasting. High heat (which could be as high as around 800 degrees Fahrenheit) is what gives you the authentic wood-fired pizza experience. The baking option (where you use a lower flame at around 300 degrees Fahrenheit lets you bake perfect bread that’s crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, as well as pies and pastries). The roasting option (with a flame around 450 degrees Fahrenheit) is perfect for poultry and roasted veggies.
How does this differ from a conventional oven? With a pizza oven, you control not only the temperature (and remember, conventional ovens max out at around 500 degrees Fahrenheit while pizza ovens can reach temperatures of around 800 degrees Fahrenheit) but also the placement of the flame. This affects heat distribution and results in food that is cooked more rapidly, which seals in the flavor.
More Fun Times with Friends and Family
If you’re having an outdoor party and you’re making pizza in your regular oven, do you want the party to continue outside without you? That’s what happens when you have to keep running indoors to assemble pizzas and making trips to the kitchen every couple of minutes to check if a pizza is done. A pizza oven will bake your pizza to perfection, right in front of your eyes, while you enjoy the experience from your patio!
A pizza oven is not only a great conversation starter but can quickly become your new favorite way to cook. In fact, it’s something you and your guests can all participate in: Let everyone assemble their own personal pizzas, and just minutes later, each guest pulls out a perfectly golden pie with flavorful ingredients they love—a great, no-compromise way to please everyone.
Match Your Outdoor Decor, or Make a Statement
A custom built wood fired pizza oven can become a stand-alone focal point in your outdoor cooking area. Most often it’s designed to fit seamlessly into your kitchen and patio decor, but you can also make it into a sculptural element—a stand-alone feature that has its own flair. This is a good option if you already have an outdoor kitchen and the addition of a pizza oven isn’t feasible due to space constraints.