Pizza Oven Suggestions

This is my first post. Hello all. I am looking into the potential purchase of new pizza ovens. I sell Sicilian and New York style pizza and I’m working with some ancient Blodgett ovens. I’m looking for advice or suggestions. I need my pizzas to cook more evenly and quicker than what they currently do. Thank you in advance.

I have a rotoflex that I love

Edge…call Nick at Alpha Rest Equip in Mass…I think he has a test bake truck now

what blodgetts do you have? We use old 1000’s and they bake superior to any newer deck oven for NY style/sicilian. We never need to rotate pies, they do perfect top/bottom/sides browning, hold heat great, and are so simple in construction never need to see a service man. For NY style true coinsures are not going to come if you use a conveyor oven. We charge $20 for an 18" cheese pie and are more busy than we like most times because the people coming in want an authentic old school pie which is getting harder and harder to find today. Walter

We sell Edge Ovens.Every buyer very happy with the results.

Geroge Mills

Not trying to kill a sale of the Edge, But I absolutely love my Sveba Dahlen ovens.

Could you please message me about your Edge ovens. I am in the market for two new ovens.

In my honest opinion a New York pie should be cooked in a deck or brick oven. I belive it results in a superior product. I haven’t tried cooking on conveyors, just eaten from many. Although the cheese/sauce tastes the same, the crust is where you can tell a difference between a deck and conveyor.

I would love to be able to cook on a conveyor (speed, convenience) and duplicate the product from a deck oven.

I find hiring employees that can hand toss 18" and 25" pies to my standards very frustrating! That is one of my main complaints of a deck oven…

I feel your pain…

I’ve had a few people here over the years tell me that you can configure a conveyor oven / dough recipe to give the same results as a deck oven but I’ve never actually seen/tasted one. I’ve thought about scheduling a meeting with some oven manufacturers just to see if they can actually pull it off.

We have 4 stacks (8) of bakers pride y600 ovens in two locations. I’ll tell you that the new style bakers pride ovens SUCK in comparison to the older (late 60s early 70s?) ovens. Total inconsistent cooking, constant burning, turning, etc. If we want to cook at 550-575 which is what our dough cooks best at we HAVE to use screens unless we are super busy and the stone is cooled down (heats back up way too quick) or else the bottom of the pie gets burned. None of this happens on our old bakers pride ovens. We don’t even really have to turn the pies. Perfect bake every time (unless you leave it in too long of course). The decks were made differently back then and it shows. One day I’ll sell these “new style” ovens… Such a pain in the ass to move them though. :confused:

Just our experience:

We started selling conveyor ovens when everyone was using decks.

We have switched thousands to air impingement ovens and never failed to produce the clients pizza just the way the wanted it.

Note from the Dough Doctor.
, I have been able to successfully bake both the thin and thick crust pizzas to perfection side by side in the same oven cavity, on the same belt, without any finger or airflow changes to accommodate either of the pizzas, and best of all, I have been able to do this with anything from a plain, cheese pizza to a fully loaded pizza with up to 9 different toppings. Accomplishing something like this with an air impingement oven was unheard of 10-years ago, and it was a wish a mere 5-years ago, but today it is a reality.

George Mills

What changed? The belts look the same and they are still cooking with air?

Anyone in the greater Houston area successfully replicating a Pizza baked in a deck oven? Hell, anyone in Texas or Louisiana? I’m willing to take the drive to check it out… I want to find this mythical product and try it. I’d be willing to make the switch at one of our locations…

our success with the air impingement ovens was rite from the start.

we did hundreds of demo bakes and never failed to bake the pizzas just the way the operator wanted.

as we sold thousands of ovens its obvious that the operators were getting the bake they wanted.

as tom mentioned there have been many improvements in the ovens and the newest models as to operating cost and production levels and vast increases in warranty time.

George mills

I use 1960 Blodgett 1000 ovens and have the same even bake no rotating pies as your older BP. Frank Mastro designed both Blodgett and BP of that era ovens. I would never switch to the newer ovens. As you say they stink with uneven bakes, rotating pies. I have yet to taste a NY style pizza that rates in my book from a conveyor oven. Walter

Thanks all. I just realized I wrote that I had New York style I actually have Chicago style and Sicilian.

Is that a Chicago style thick crust/pan or stuffed, or a thin crust? Do you use raw sausage? It can make a huge impact upon your oven selection.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

George,
How much of an upgrade is an Edge from a MM PS360 oven? How much improvement would be found by changing ovens?

The PS 360 is very old technology. A great many improvements have been made in ovens.

Modulating gas burners. Lower gas consumption. Improvement in air flow technology ,Lower heat expelled out the conveyor openings are the major improvements…Conveyor belt motors an many other component have been vastly improved.

Consider that the PS 360 had a one year warranty. The Edge ovens have a five year warranty.
George Mills

George Mills

Every time I think I want to switch from my Bakers Pride electric deck ovens to a conveyor, I see a new thread about someone’s breaking down and/or needing constant attention.

Actually, anymore the air impingement oven are really very reliable and some come with excellent warranties too. What you are referring to is what I like to call the “casino” effect. You walk into the casino and all you heat is ding, ding, ding, caching, caching, caching! All the slots are paying off, gotta get into the action! What you don’t hear is all of those losers, they’re pretty quiet. Same with air impingement ovens, you only hear about the troublesome ones, and even then you have to look at the age of the oven, some of the older generation ovens had electrical problems due to excessive heat by the control panel, on all of the “new generation” air impingement ovens those problems have been addressed. We once had an old B.P. electric deck oven that we had to part ways with because it too the better part of 15-minutes to bake a single thin crust pizza, not to mention how terribly long it took to bake an oven full of them, seems the heating elements were going out and the wiring looked like dry pasta strings (brittle) so we got rid of it and replaced it with a gas deck oven. We would have replaced it with an air impingement oven but we already had three of them and didn’t need any more.
I wrote an article on ovens not too long ago in which I discussed how you buy the oven based on your product and concept rather than trying to make the oven fit your product and work in your concept.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Hi George

Could you teld me more about Edge Ovens? Im from mexico and need to buy and air impingment oven 32 deep and 40-55 wide. I would like to get quote and the advantages of Edge ovens.

adolfo