Key specs – Dimensions: 50 x ​​81.5 x 83.7cm; Weight: 28kg; Fuel Type: Wood, gas and charcoal; Portable: No; Max pizza size: 16in Heat-proof gloves Getting up close and personal with an oven that can burn at 500°C comes with its risks. Wearing heat-proof gloves will help keep you safe while adding fuel, and if necessary, when launching and rotating pizzas. Pizza stone These are the cooking surface and are usually made from moisture-absorbent cordierite. They're fantastic for retaining heat and are key for crisping up the base of your pizza. Most ovens come with a pizza stone included. Can’t I just cook pizza in a regular oven or in a cast-iron pan? Of course and you can achieve some great results too with the right techniques. However, unless you have a proper pizza oven, you’ll never be able to duplicate that authentic wood-fired taste in exactly the same way.

Turning peel This smaller paddle has a rounded edge to help you slide it under one side of the pizza and turn it while it's cooking, without the need to take it out. This peel is a handy tool, but it's not essential like the standard pizza peel. The perfect introduction to authentic wood-fired cooking. The Roma is fun and easy to use. Its small footprint makes it ideal for households with limited space. Somewhere in your garden, where it’s relatively sheltered from the breeze, as winds can send cool air into your oven and bring those cooking temperatures down. You’ll want a flat, even surface on which to rest your oven, whether that’s a heatproof tabletop, or the ground if it has its own legs or stand.It comes with a thermometer built into the lid, so you can ensure you’re working with optimal temperatures at all times, as well as an air vent, chimney and wheels for easy transportation. The oven also comes with a base shelf for wood storage, so you can keep your wood close at hand when using it. When getting the flames going, heating the oven to temperature and cooking pizzas, we note any design elements or features that impact our cooking experience. Time to reach cooking temperature They often take up a lot of kitchen counter space, though, and cooking at such high temperatures can still have smoky results and be problematic when cooking indoors. The appliance has two separate sections that make both direct and indirect cooking possible: a classic American-style barbecue for grilling and a smoker that allows you to smoke an array of different meats.

We use an infrared thermometer to record the surface temperature of the pizza stone in the oven and time how long it takes to reach 400°C. Some pizza ovens take less than 15 minutes, while others fail to reach 400°C altogether. Pizza quality Pairing great aesthetics with impressive functionality and performance, the Etna Fermo is one of our current favourite pizza ovens. Dubbed “the Rolls-Royce of pizza ovens” in our full review, the Gozney Dome earns this title due to its luxurious design and excellent performance. Its cream-coloured, domed exterior is quite simply a pleasure to look at, while the weatherproofed ceramic and stainless body feels sturdy and well put-together, proving to be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing.You'll also likely find that a BBQ pizza oven is a slower cook than other oven types. It won't cook pizzas in 90 seconds flat like some freestanding ovens do, and because the heat source is below the pizza stone, the stone is often much hotter than the rest of the oven. Throughout testing, the Etna Fermo also revealed several neat design touches. The oven’s large internal capacity meant it was able to fit sizable pizzas of up to 16in, while its extra-wide opening at the front made it simple to adjust, turn and remove our pizzas as they cooked. The Etna Fermo’s U-shaped burner was another standout feature: both practical and pretty, it looked great in use and also ensured our pizzas cooked more evenly. When tested with the gas burner, the Roccbox reached its maximum temperature of 500ºC in around 30-45 minutes. 12in pizzas cooked in around 60 seconds, sometimes less and the result was excellent, with a well cooked base and crispy crust. Unfortunately, the Roccbox struggled to reach the maximum temperature using the wood burner. It also required a lot of wood to stay hot and struggled to stay at a consistent temperature without regular tending. This meant pizzas took longer to cook but the results were still authentic and delicious. We select the UK's bestselling pizza ovens and have cooked more than 80 pizzas to find out which are the easiest to use and which cook the best food.

Rotate it regularly The strongest heat usually comes from one direction, especially in gas and wood-fired ovens. You'll want to rotate the pizza a few times during cooking to make sure it cooks evenly. Once every 30 seconds is a good rule of thumb, but keep an eye on it while it cooks. A blend of wood fired logs or pellets along with a few briquettes is the only workable way to introduce charcoal to cooking with pizza. As such, you won't find any 'charcoal-only' ovens for sale. While Danish brand Witt may not have the name recognition of competitors like Ooni or Gozney, we can safely say it deserves to. This stylish pizza oven impresses from the first glance with its sleek, modern design and striking range of colour options. Coming largely pre-assembled, the Etna Fermo is also simple to set up, needing just a AA battery and a bottle of butane to get it going. Try other dishes too Pizza isn't the only thing these ovens are good for. If you have cookware that can handle the heat, there are endless possibilities – try roasting a joints of meat, steaming a pot of mussels or even baking bread. The oven is super easy to light. All you need is one of our Woodson fire lighters and kiln dried hardwood. Our user guide shows you how to get your oven safely and efficiently lit. It’s also really easy to manage and use with our pizza peel set.

First, you should compare the dimensions of the oven you're interested in with the size of your barbecue – you won't get far if your grill isn't big enough for the oven to sit snugly. It takes just ten minutes to get to temperature (this varies depending on the temperature of your BBQ) and stays hot enough to cook a 12in pizza to crispy perfection in a matter of minutes. Once everyone is pizza-d out, the removable stone base makes it easy to clean and its small size and helpful handles on both sides make it a doddle to store away. Those who want to use charcoal should go for a wood-fired oven and introduce a few briquettes to a mostly wood-based fire. BBQ pizza ovens Bristle brush Especially useful for wood-fired ovens where ash is likely, a tough bristle brush is handy for removing ash from the pizza stone ready for cooking, as well as for cleaning out your oven after use. Under ideal conditions, we found that the Etna Fermo’s pizza stone could reach its operating temperature of 500ºC in just 18 minutes, although it struggled a little to reach this temperature on cooler days. Even below 500ºC, it was able to cook a classic, thin-crust homemade pizza to perfection in just 60 seconds. What’s more, we found it matched the authentic flavour of wood-powered ovens.