commercial convection oven

[lawizardpa]

Hi !     I am trying to find out if I can make Pan Pizzas & thin crust Pizzas in a commercial Convection oven ?  Also how would I obtain the Best results ? 

[Pete-zza]

lawizardpa,

If you really mean a convection oven, Tom Lehmann says that they do not make good pizzas: http://www.pmq.com/cgi-bin/tt/index.cgi?noframes;read=1930.

Peter

[lawizardpa]

Peter ; thank you so much for your Reply.
Re: Tom Lehmann.
lawizardpa 

[David]

Two very different Pizzas.I would say no to thin crust but question Tom on the Pan Pizzas?

[Pete-zza]

David,

I don't have an answer to your specific question but when I looked at the descriptionsand a few sample spec sheets for the commercial convection ovens sold by Bakers Pride and Blodgett, I could not find any references to pizza whatsoever. The descriptions for their pizza ovens were, of course, replete with references to pizza.

Tom Lehmann occasionally gets questions about convection ovens when the posters really mean air impingement ovens. That is why I qualified my comments to lawizardpa, to be sure that he really meant a convection oven. Tom's general view on commercial convection ovens is summarized succinctly as follows:

About the only oven that I can't really make a decent pizza in is a convection oven. That shouldn't be a surprise though as they were never designed to make pizzas.

If there are exceptions, Tom will usually mention them. Maybe there is a commercial convection oven out there somewhere that can be used to bake pizzas, but I am not aware of any from my reading.

Peter

[November]

Just to draw another line of distinction, not all convection ovens rely on heated air alone.  Many also utilize radiant heat.  In fact, the best ovens are just radiant element ovens with a fan.  Air impingement ovens rely entirely on convection, making them more "convection" than a lot of "convection ovens."  I hope Tom takes this into consideration when he gives advice about ovens.  A lot of the heat transfer in a wood-burning oven is by convection, and I know nobody is going to argue that pizzas don't bake well in a wood-burning oven.

If you're baking on a pizza stone, it shouldn't make one bit of difference what the source of heat is on the bottom of the oven, since it's the stone that's transferring the heat by conduction.

- red.november