5-Minute Plain New York on Steel

Started by Cheazy E, June 11, 2022, 06:21:25 PM

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Cheazy E

My kiddo gave me one of those $99.99 countertop Granitestone Piezano ovens for Christmas. I couldn't find much solid info online about them. It's all paid ads or influencer stuff without any real info. I figured I'd give it a shot with my normal dough recipe, scaled down to fit in the oven, and if anyone here was thinking about picking one up, maybe this could help them make a call.

The oven claims it can hit 800F. There are two heating elements, one below the stone and one above near the dome. It's a clamshell design, and there are two dials you can use to control the temperature of each element independently. There's also a glass onion at the top, so you can peer down and watch your cheese melt.

I preheated for 30 minutes and the built-in temp gauge read 700. The heating elements are not uniform, with the metal coil shaped to try and cover both the edges and center of the pizza.

The oven came with these really odd two half circle peels you're supposed to use to launch, but I just used my regular peels. Nothing notable about the launch. If you want a chuckle, you can watch YouTube videos of people trying to launch holding two halves of a tiny peel, akimbo style.

You do have to open up the oven when you launch and each time you turn the pizza, but it really wasn't necessary to do that. It doesn't cook perfectly even on top due to the shape of the element, but whether or fussed with turning or not, the results weren't remarkably different. It's not perfectly even, but nothing disastrous either.

With both dials cranked to "800" the pizzas took about 7 minutes a pop. They were crispy, but a bit drier than I prefer.

All in all, not terrible for the price, though it's not clear to me what the use case is for this if you have a home oven, given you can get a steel or stone for cheaper. Maybe camping or an RV, or for folks in an apartment or flat without an oven?

Anyway, here's how it turned out. Bob's Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour at 62%. Grande mozzarella and provolone. Alta Cucina tomatoes.

gcpizza


As for a use case, I can see that a little oven like that might be nice for those summer days when it's extremely hot and humid and it seems like the oven and the air conditioner are fighting each other. I just let them duke it out, but there have been some days when I've thought that I shouldn't be making pizza.

Every time that I make pizza on those types of days I think about getting a countertop oven, like the Chefman, but I never get around to actually buying one. The other day @DDT mentioned that his cousin hosted gatherings where he cranked out 15 pizzas one after the other using a clamshell oven. I know Italy has a 220 V system so I figured that these types of ovens over there must have higher wattage than the 1200 W ones found in the US. Curious, I looked up the specs for the G3 Ferrari ovens, which seem to be popular, and I was surprised that even though they were 220 V they were also only 1200 W. It got me thinking that while I don't need to make 15 pizzas, if a US version of an oven like this could do 2-4 pizzas in a reasonable amount of time, it might be nice for summertime use.

I know that you just got this and have only made one pizza with it, but if you ever make multiple pizzas back to back, I'd like to hear about what you think about the recovery time of the oven and if it's reasonable to think that 2-4 can be made in a reasonable amount of time.

Cheazy E

I made four back to back, and there was effectively no noticeable recovery time. I'd take one out, slide it onto the rack, and get to work stretching and topping the next one. So, the time between each pizza was probably about 2-3 minutes. Both burners are just inches from the stone and pizza, and they are constantly running to keep it at temp. They do turn off independently when the oven detects they are at the desired temp.

That said, it never really got hot enough to make a great pizza for me, and at the 11"-ish max, it's got some big (er, maybe small) limitations. Your use cases make sense, though, and I bet a lot of folks who aren't so pedantic about their pizza as we can be would think this is pretty damn good pizza, especially for something they typically don't make at home.

Maybe I'll drag it out again and see if I can improve it. 

gcpizza

Quote from: Cheazy E on January 18, 2025, 05:24:48 PMI made four back to back, and there was effectively no noticeable recovery time. I'd take one out, slide it onto the rack, and get to work stretching and topping the next one. So, the time between each pizza was probably about 2-3 minutes. Both burners are just inches from the stone and pizza, and they are constantly running to keep it at temp. They do turn off independently when the oven detects they are at the desired temp.

That said, it never really got hot enough to make a great pizza for me, and at the 11"-ish max, it's got some big (er, maybe small) limitations. Your use cases make sense, though, and I bet a lot of folks who aren't so pedantic about their pizza as we can be would think this is pretty damn good pizza, especially for something they typically don't make at home.

Maybe I'll drag it out again and see if I can improve it.
Let us know your findings if you decide to further experiment with the oven.

Based on what you've said about the recovery time I just may get one come summer to play with. The price is right for me to take a chance on it and see what it can do.

Decoy205

Your pizza experience shows for sure.  I doubt some noob coming in with one of those would get anywhere close to those results.
John - Home baker. Any day I can make dough is a good day!

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gcpizza

Quote from: Decoy205 on January 19, 2025, 08:51:05 AMYour pizza experience shows for sure.  I doubt some noob coming in with one of those would get anywhere close to those results.
That's true no matter what the oven is. Give that noob a Pizza Master and they'd do about the same and maybe even worse.

Cheazy E

#126
Broke out the IR thermometer. The manual indicates the oven comes up to full temp at 10 minutes, and sure enough, the built in gauge read 850F degrees at the 10 minute mark. The IR gun, however, showed the center stone right at 700. The outer areas of the stone varied wildly, ranging from 500-600 degrees.

I put the lid back down and let it heat up for another 10 minutes. An interesting note, the top and bottom elements will automatically turn on and off, based on the oven's temperature settings. You can't just force them to run continuously to keep saturating the stone. After the additional 10 minutes, the gauge once again read 850F.

Center stone at 10 minutes was 725. After 30 seconds with the lid open, the stone had dropped to 670. 620 at one minute. 595 at 90 seconds. 570 at two minutes.

So, I think the headline for this little inexpensive guy is that the thin stone really can't store enough heat to make great pizzas, it certainly isn't capable of 800 degrees, and that if you are making multiple pizzas, you should probably give it 5 minutes or more to come back up to it's full temp.

gcpizza

@Cheazy E , That's good information. Thank you for taking the time to do that.

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