Stainless Steel Pizza Ovens: Quality Matters

The cheap pizza ovens do not originate from high-quality European production, but mostly from Asian countries. This doesn't always have to be a disadvantage, but it is if you are looking for a durable and high-quality solution. They are built to lower quality standards. The stainless steel material thickness is low, usually only 0.5mm, so the ovens are unable to maintain the temperature. This has several disadvantages. Firstly, significantly more energy supply is required to fire up the oven and maintain the temperature, i.e., wood. A high-quality pizza oven from the Italian manufacturer Fontana reaches a temperature of 350 degrees with 2 kg of wood in 30 minutes. A cheap oven is not capable of reaching this high temperature due to lack of insulation – not even with a very high wood usage. An original Fontana pizza oven has a material thickness of 2.5mm in the dome and 4mm in the baking chamber. This is an additional reinforcement in the baking chamber to protect the dome and ensure the oven's longevity.

In combination with other quality features such as insulation, enormous energy efficiency is achieved here. This also leads to a very long operating time of the ovens. In a Fontana pizza oven, you can bake a lot of pizza for hours with low wood consumption, and nothing stands in the way of a cozy garden party. And the next morning, the oven still has 200 degrees to bake bread, rolls, and cakes or prepare a casserole for lunch. In a cheap oven from China, it is not possible to bake a large number of pizzas over a longer period because the inserted pizzas naturally lead to a drop in temperature, and the oven has to rebuild this temperature over a relatively long period, whereas an oven with high-quality insulation forgives this short temperature drop unnoticeably.

Additionally, there is poor or missing insulation in the ovens. For pizza ovens produced in Asia, a very thin mat made of fiberglass is used, which lowers production costs. High-quality Italian pizza ovens are insulated with quality natural wool, which provides much better insulation performance. The insulation wool is bio-soluble and therefore not harmful to health. This also has consequences for handling the ovens: high-quality insulated ovens do not get warmer than 50 degrees on the outside, so there is no risk of burns. Cheap ovens lose heat to the outside due to lack of insulation and become dangerously hot accordingly.

The baking surfaces also put the discount pizza ovens at a disadvantage. The stones installed in cheap ovens do not correspond in thickness or composition to the high-quality and food-safe certified chamotte stones (30mm thickness) of the original Italian pizza ovens from Fontana. The Asian stones are mixed from various materials, have a low thickness, and do not hold the temperature over a long period. Often the contents of the stones are dubious and sometimes even carcinogenic. Who wants to bake their pizza on a stone whose contents may be hazardous to health?

The shape of the pizza oven also plays a major role in air circulation. While the original Fontana pizza ovens obtain a traditional and precisely shaped dome in a complex process, cheap Asian productions are mostly square-shaped. This goes much faster and is cheaper. The quality suffers as a result. In the original dome ovens, hot air circulates perfectly, entirely by itself. It is always in motion, surrounds the food, and allows it to cook absolutely evenly. In an original Italian pizza oven from Fontana, it is not necessary to rotate or reposition the dish. In cheap imitation ovens, a pizza can sometimes burn on one side and still be raw on the other.

Original Fontana ovens are robust and heat-resistant. They are made of absolutely high-quality stainless steel, which is electro-galvanized and therefore even more robust than any other steel. They are pre-assembled and ready for use without lengthy assembly at home. A customer enjoys a Fontana pizza oven for years without complaints. Therefore, Fontana pizza ovens come with a 6-year warranty, while cheap Asian products often do not even survive the maximum two-year warranty.

We hope you have gained a good impression of the quality differences between cheap pizza ovens at the discounter and high-quality pizza ovens from Italian production in our shop. We also offer budget-friendly entry-level models of very good quality that you will enjoy for many years. Contact us, we would be happy to advise you and show you our high-quality stainless steel pizza ovens from Fontana in our showroom.