We have one of the Gemeni-55 infrared (CTX) ovens that we use during our pizza seminars. Remember, when discussing heat, you are referring to emitter temperatures, not oven chamber temperature. These ovens are very quiet in operation, and they don’t put off a lot of surplus heat. They are the only way to go on cruise ships, and military ships too for that matter. They are great for a lot of baking applications, but the one place where I find that they fall short is in their aboility to manage excess moisture on the top of the pizzas. If you make a pizza with a lot of vegetable toppings, there is a goo9d chance that they will release excess moisture during baking and these ovens are not the best choice for managing that moisture, in a case like this, an air impinger is awfully hard to beat. On the other hane, air impingement ovens are not the best choice for baking breads and cakes. You can make cookies without too much of a problem, and you can make brownies if you remember to cover the pans with a sheet of foil for part of the bake, but they bomb out when you try to make any bread items larger than breadsticks or garlic knots, now, yes, you can reprofile the fingers to make bread items, but we’re talking about using a typical pizza baking finger profile here.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor