Flaming Coals Premium Wood Fired Pizza Oven Review
I'm excited to share with you a brand new product that literally only just came in this week. The Flaming Coals Premium Wood Fired Pizza Oven.
We've been selling wood-fired pizza ovens for over 10 years and sold nearly 2000 units over the years, but this premium model is next level!
Let me run you through it.
Firstly, what you see is what you get. The stand, the door, the temp gauge, everything is all included.
The oven weighs about 180kgs, however, the wheels make it easy for 1 person to move around on a relatively smooth surface. It should go without saying, but obviously don't try wheeling it over crushed rock, grass or uneven surfaces and especially don't try to move it while it is still hot!. With the wheel brakes off, 1 person can easily move it around.
The solid stainless shelf makes the oven nice and study but also doubles up the storage rack for your wood.
Even though the stand is included in the package, you don't need to assemble and use the stand if you don't want to. You can easily mount the pizza oven onto an existing bench top or catering trailer if you'd prefer. I've seen some pretty nice outdoor kitchen setups where customers have integrated a wood-fired oven on their stone or stainless steel bench top. A nice-looking pizza oven certainly becomes the centrepiece of the outdoor kitchen that's for sure.
Moving up to the dome, you'll see there's a nice heavy door. The benefit of having a door is that it helps keep your temperatures more stable. While this doesn't matter too much when cooking pizzas at 400+ degrees C, the door definitely comes in handy when cooking roasts and breads at lower 200-220 degree temperatures.
The door comes with an integrated peephole so even when the door is on, you can keep an eye on your food. Also on the dome there's a temperature gauge so you can make sure you're cooking at the right temperature which will vary depending whether you're cooking a wood-fired pizza, bread, roasts or even trays of lasagne.
On the top of the dome, there is a flue that allows airflow to be easily adjusted. When I light the fire in my wood-fired pizza oven, I like to have the flue completely open to help draw air and light the fire quicker.It also allows any smells or resins to escape through the flue before putting your food in.
Next we look at the cooking chamber and this is where the Flaming Coals Premium Pizza Oven sets itself apart from any other oven in the same price point. The dome consists of 2 layers with about 15cm of fibreglass insulation in between. This is about 5 times the standard thickness of insulation in other wood-fired ovens.
The benefit of the added thickness and insulation is it will stay hotter for longer meaning you'll use less wood during your cook and the outside won't get as hot which is good if you have little ones or pets running around.
Inside the cooking chamber there are 4 large pizza stones. These stones are 32mm thick and will heat up nicely to give your pizzas a crispy base. The benefit of pizza stones over normal pizza bricks is that pizza stones are smoother and are easier to work with, particularly if you put your pizza dough directly on the base of the oven rather than using pizza trays.
The internal cooking area is 70cm wide x 95cm deep. You can easily fit 2-3 large pizzas in here while having the fire going. Personally, I wouldn't put more than 2 pizzas into the wood-fired oven at a time, let me explain why. the optimum cooking temperature for cooking a perfect wood-fired pizza is 400-450 degrees C.
When you're cooking at such high temperatures, pizzas cook very VERY quickly. I'm talking 2, maximum 3 minutes depending on how many toppings you've added (less is more by the way!). It is natural that the side of the crust closest to the fire is going to cook quicker, so you need to rotate the pizzas during the cook to ensure an evenly cooked crust. I'm a pretty good multi tasker, but even I struggle to manage 2 pizzas at a time, constantly rotating them in the oven while they cook for 2 minutes.
If you're not familiar with how a wood-fired pizza oven works, I'll run through the process of getting it up and running. We have previously created a video and post about How to Light a Wood-fired Pizza Oven , but I'll give you a really quick overview
Firstly, start with about 5 pieces of kindling and then put 3 wood splits aboutthe size of your forearm in a teepee formation. Then light a couple of firelighters to get the kindling started. Light the wood towards the front/ middle of the oven because this is where you're going to be cookingyour pizza and you want the bricks get nice and hot.
I leave the flue all the way open and have the door chocked about 2-3 inches to get the air through and allow any funny smells from the firelighters or wood to escape through the chimney.
After about 45 mins, your oven should be up to around 400-450 degrees and you're ready to cook. Once you're ready to cook, use a rake or a brush to push the fire to the back of the oven and give the pizza stones a sweep to remove most of the ash. I personally like to put my pizza dough directly onto the pizza stones to get a more authentic flavour and crispier base, but some people like to cook on pizza trays.
Just remember, even though it's called a wood fired pizza oven, it'sj ust a wood-fired oven and you can cook anything in here. Whatever you cook in your kitchen can be cooked inside a wood-fired oven.
As you can probably tell, I'm super excited about the new Flaming Coals Premium Wood Fired Pizza oven and although I already have a pizza oven at home, I'm thinking it could be a good time for an upgrade.
Happy cooking.
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by: Rhiannon Peterson