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See why.Indoor Pizza Ovens
Is a specialty appliance the secret to making great pizza at home?
By Published Sept. 1, 2018
Our top-ranked indoor pizza oven, the Forno Magnifico Electric Pizza Oven, has been discontinued. Since we didn't like the other models we tested, we recommend that cooks interested in making pizza at home stick to using our favorite baking stone, the Pizzacraft All-Purpose Baking Stone. We also highly recommend the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo. At nearly $1,000, this high-end indoor pizza oven is a lot more expensive than a baking stone, but it makes restaurant-quality pizza in record time.
What You Need To Know
We love making pizza, but it can be challenging to get good results at home. Restaurants often have special ovens that reach upwards of 800 degrees, cooking the dough and toppings quickly and producing pizzas with crisp, golden-brown crusts and chewy interiors. To approximate that high heat at home, we crank the oven to 500 degrees and preheat a baking stone for a full hour so it becomes saturated with heat that it will transfer to the dough. Meanwhile, heat reflects off the top of the oven and cooks the toppings. It works beautifully, but we're always on the lookout for quicker, easier methods. We were intrigued by indoor pizza ovens, midsize countertop appliances that minimize the preheating time and can reach higher temperatures than conventional home ovens.
We purchased five models, priced from about $35.00 to just under $170.00, including four electric ovens and one that works on a gas stovetop. We churned out dozens of pizzas, including a variety of homemade doughs and store-bought frozen pizzas, and evaluated the quality of the finished pies. For comparison, we held blind tastings of pizzas baked in the indoor pizza ovens, comparing them with each other and with identical pizzas prepared in a conventional oven according to recipe or package instructions. Throughout, we timed how long the pizza ovens took to preheat and cook, rated how easy it was to unload and remove pizzas, and assessed each product's overall design.
Design Differences
Three of the electric models resembled waffle irons, with hinged lids and lightly textured nonstick plates or flat ceramic baking surfaces. One was relatively compact, like a fat frisbee; two were closer in size to a basketball. The fourth machine was a clear outlier. It didn't have a lid or even any walls. Instead, it had an exposed nonstick plate that rotated on a spindle between two wedge-shaped heating elements.
The stovetop model consisted of a metal frame that held two ceramic baking stones about an inch apart, creating an insulating layer of air. According to the manufacturer, this helps the top stone, which holds the pizza, heat more evenly.
Evaluating the Pizzas
All the machines' cooking surfaces were roughly 12 inches in diameter, so we stretched our homemade doughs—even the ones we cooked in the oven—to 12 inches rather than the 13 we call for in our recipes. (It didn't make a noticeable difference in the thickness.) We used the manufacturers' instructions for guidelines on baking time and temperature, but we used our own judgment, too. If a pizza looked too soft or pale, we let it cook a little longer.
Most models produced acceptable frozen pizzas, but more delicate homemade p...
Everything We Tested
Recommended with reservations
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Pizza Quality: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Maneuverability: 2 stars out of 3.
The cooking surface reached 525°F and air inside the oven was a scorching 593°F, so it produced crisp, “deeply tanned” crust with a little “char” that veered toward burnt. Cheese was evenly melted and bubbly, but tasters still preferred pizzas cooked on our favorite baking stone in a hot oven. We liked that the door on this model swung completely open for access to the whole pizza and that its flat cooking surface made it easy to unload, rotate, and remove pizzas. It had an annoying auto-off feature: The timer didn't just alert us but actually shut the machine off.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Pizza Quality: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Maneuverability: 1.5 stars out of 3.
This model, which sits on top of a gas burner, always made our bottom crusts deeply browned and nicely crisp. The tops of the pizzas sometimes cooked a little unevenly, though, even when we rotated the pizzas. One section of a pizza would be nicely charred and melty, while other sides had slightly less of that flavorful browning. The oven's 13 x 2.75-inch window made it difficult to see and rotate the pizza. The oven gets quite hot and must be left on the stovetop until it has cooled.
Not Recommended
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Pizza Quality: 1 stars out of 3.
- Maneuverability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
This simple model, about the size of a fat frisbee, is like a waffle iron with flat nonstick plates. It doesn't include any controls for time or temperature, so you just plug it in to begin preheating. We liked frozen pizza made in this machine, but homemade doughs never became crisp enough. Even when the cheese was melted and the toppings were crisp, the crust remained “quite pale” and “doughy.” The cooking surface has a ¾-inch lip, so we couldn't easily slide pizzas in and out; instead, we had to drag them up and over that edge.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Pizza Quality: 1 stars out of 3.
- Maneuverability: 1.5 stars out of 3.
This odd machine didn't have any walls to trap heat. Also odd: Its cooking surface rotates on a spindle between two wedge-shaped heating coils that cover a fraction of the pizza at a time. The nonstick plate can't be preheated and never became hotter than 265°F. It's no wonder that the pizza crust often felt doughy and “underbaked” even when toppings were fully cooked. Due to the placement of the upper heating element, cheese browned much more toward the edges than in the center.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Pizza Quality: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Maneuverability: 1 stars out of 3.
This hulking machine has a ceramic stone and a lengthy 35-minute preheating cycle—two features that should have ensured success. Unfortunately, its exposed heating coil was just 1¾ inches above the cooking surface, so almost every pizza we made, including thin-crust pies, brushed against the exposed coil and scorched. Cheese and toppings stuck to it and had to be scraped off later. The smoke became trapped in the machine, so even the sections that weren't scorched had a “harsh burnt flavor.”
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Kate Shannon
Kate is a deputy editor for ATK Reviews. She's a culinary school graduate and former line cook and cheesemonger.
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