Question:
Dear Advice Guy,
I have been doing pizza nights with a stacked convection oven but can’t keep up with demand. I want to make this a regular offering but don’t have the hood space to install a proper pizza oven. What do you suggest to decrease my pickup time? We always sell out.
– Chef-Owner
Answer:
Congrats on the success of your pizza nights! You raise a common problem. In an ideal scenario, the kitchen would be designed to optimally execute your menu. While designing your kitchen around your menu may work in a new location with an established system, it seldom works in existing restaurants that try new things, in your case, a pizza night using a convection oven. Pizza consultant Gregorio Fierro says, “One fact for sure, a commercial convection might be the least efficient way to bake pizza.”
That said, there are a few things you might try, individually or in combination, to make pizza with a quick pickup a regular offering:
- Rethink your idea of a pizza oven. Small electric pizza ovens these days can generate tremendous amounts of heat and as little as a 90-second bake. Don’t think that a pizza oven needs to be the large deck oven or brick behemoth you find in a pizzeria. We have a small Waring Commercial pizza oven that only takes up 28 inches of hood space and can recover quickly to keep up with pie after pie. Fierro says, “The new generation of electric deck pizza ovens offer a wide heat range, reasonable cost of acquisition and operation, and a number of different sizes and configurations. It will do almost everything the convection ovens will do plus give you the possibility of making a world-class pizza.”
- Stones or steels. If you can’t incorporate a pizza oven in your footprint, consider building a mock deck oven with stones or steels. These thermal masses absorb energy from the oven and radiate it back into the product when thoroughly preheated. Choose the thickest products you can find and keep them in the oven. Joe Beddia, chef-owner of Pizzeria Beddia and author of Pizza Camp recommends the Outset cordierite pizza stone. In terms of recovery time, I’ve had more success with a thick steel like the Emperor from Dough-Joe.
- Par-baked shells. While maybe not authentic or optimal, I grew up on par-baked pizza shells and, depending on your overall concept and pizza style, you can deliver a serviceable pie quickly by buying a par-baked crust or getting yourself prepped by partially baking your crusts before service. Pizza snobs may send me hate mail, but I’ve had worse!
More on reducing pickup times here.