Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Eight years ago, I embarked on a journey to make Neapolitan pizza at home. I never quite succeeded. The main challenge had always been creating an oven environment that's consistenly above 700F (370C). Numerous tricks and hacks were tried, and while it was possible to heat up a cooking surface (say a slab of stone) to sufficiently high temperature using the cleaning cycle of the oven, there wasn't enough convection heat to cook the top of the pizza as quickly as the bottom is cooked, resulting in an adequate bottom crust but an undercooked top lacking the leoparding qualities desired in a true Neapolitan pie. Fast-forward eight years—recently, the last oven I inherited from the previous dwellers of my apartment gave in after a final valiant effort in making pizza. It was about time, since the most powerful burner on it put out a measly 14,000 BTU/hr, and that's just about a bit more than a simmering flame by Asian cooking standards. I had always wanted a more serious gas range. But at the same time, I was fully aware that nobody designs home ovens that go above 550F, not even the Italians. By serendipity, I saw an ad by Bakerstone, a former Kickstarter project—now a company—that makes a stovetop contraption that utilizes the heat of a gas burner. The design seemed sound and brilliant, so I got one and tested it out on the most powerful burner on my old defunct stove while I waited for my new stove to arrive. It peaked at 700F after sitting on the burner for a good 45 minutes, which was already promising. I did a lot of research and got the stove with the most powerful burners approved for home use that's currently available. (I've used Wolf, BlueStar, Viking, and none of them came close.) I put the Bakerstone pizza box on it. With a 25,000 BTU/hr burner it quickly went up to 950F under half an hour and showed no sign of stopping! (So far I've had no desire to find out how high it can actually go.) It took two "canary" pies to get a feel of the mini oven. There's very little recovery time—it was churning out pizza faster than we could make and eat. It has convection heat redirected from the stovetop and radiation heat from the top of the box, so the top gets cooked properly. "Dome-ing" the pizza works beautifully. It produces little to no smoke (if you don't accidentally spill anything on it). It takes up as much space as a stockpot and just sits on one burner. It doesn't heat up the entire kitchen like the oven does. It uses heat very economically and efficiently. It's elegant and perfect. Missing that wood-fired oven flavor? Easy, I put a bunch of tiny wood chips sold for smoking in a small container and slide it in a few minutes before shoving in the pizza. You could hear the pizza's muffled crackles when you slide it in. At 800F it really cooks under 2 minutes—less than the time it takes to get dressed to go out for pizza. So now I consider the mechanical problems in making true Neapolitan pizza safely and reliably at home essentially solved. Now onto the best flavor. A few notes: - To get leoparding, high temperature is necessary but not sufficient. You also need to achieve full gluten development and full rise and a dough with the right water content. At 800F or above you need to use 55% water or less. At 700F you need 60% water or more. This is because at higher temperatures the pizza cooks faster, so if there's too much water in the dough, you will end up with a good bottom but undercooked top. And if you lift the pizza to cook the top, by the time the top is cooked the crust will be dry and crunchy like a baguette, which still tastes fine, but it's not desirable in a Neopolitan pizza. With a 14,000 BTU/hr burner you can only get to 700F, so start from 60% hydration and adjust from there.