Pizza is an art, yes, but so is the oven in which it cooks.
While the pizza-maker or restaurateur gets much attention and deservedly so, creating great pizza also requires a great oven. No?
Just think about the transcendent crusts created in these ovens around town, from 1950s-era gas-powered, fire-tiled types to custom-built, wood-fired behemoths.
Aurelio’s Pizza
Type of oven: Montague Hearthbake Pizza Oven
Bragging rights: Old-timers at Aurelio’s flagship restaurant in Homewood will ask for their pizza to be baked in the “old ovens,” which date back to just a few years after Aurelio’s founding in 1959, rather than the “new” conveyor-style ovens installed in the 1980s. “The average person wouldn’t know the difference,” says Joseph Aurelio, chief executive officer of the chain, which has 42 locations in six states. “The regular regulars coming in 25 to 30 years would know.” We asked for pizzas baked in both ovens and found the sausage and cheese pie from the old oven had a crispier crust and was more golden. But it also had fewer toppings than the other pizza and that could have made a difference, too. The gas-powered Montague Hearthbake deck ovens have fire-tile floors, walls and ceilings that Aurelio says provides a “nice even heat.” The pizza bakers will, depending on the type of pie ordered, take the pizza from its pan and let it sit on the oven floor for a few seconds to ensure a crispier bottom. Aurelio’s in Homewood has five double-deck pizza ovens from Montague Co., a Hayward, Calif.-based maker of commercial cooking equipment.
Cooking time: 12 to 15 minutes, depending on toppings
Heat: 550 degrees
Weighs: 2,560 pounds
18162 Harwood Ave., Homewood, 708-798-8050; www.aureliospizza.com
Coalfire Pizza
Oven: Mugnaini Commercial Wood Fired Oven Model 140
Bragging rights: Coalfire Pizza’s ovens are coal-fired, a hook co-owner Dave Bonomi thought would help set the restaurant apart. The ovens are assembled by Mugnaini in its Healdsburg, Calif., plant with a Valoriani “modular oven core” imported from Italy. The pomelo-sized chunks of bituminous coal are started with oak. The oven sits high and surprisingly gracefully on black steel legs toward the rear of the open kitchen at Coalfire’s Grand Avenue location (two ovens are installed at the larger Southport restaurant). The challenge is maintaining temperature because adding uncooked pizzas to the igloo-shaped oven chamber can lower the heat. So Bonomi’s team tends to put three pies, four at the most, in the oven at a time. Bonomi estimates Coalfire’s two locations go through a ton of coal in a month.
Cooking time: 90 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on toppings
Heat: Floor temperature is kept between 850 and 900 degrees; air temperature about 1,400 degrees
Weighs: 3,700 pounds
1321 W. Grand Ave., 312-226-2625; 3707 N. Southport Ave., 773-477-2625; coalfirechicago.com
Donati’s Pizza
Oven: Middleby Marshall WOW direct gas-fired conveyor oven
Bragging rights: Fast-casual dining means food fast, according to Jeff Urso, Donati’s co-founder. The restaurant’s WOW oven helps them by cutting down the baking time for, say a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza from 45 minutes to 8 to 10 minutes. How? Hundreds of tiny air jets above and below the oven’s slowly-moving conveyor belt push hot air at the pizzas that, in the words of the Elgin-based manufacturer’s website, “gives very rapid baking without burning the product.” A computer-powered sensor tells the oven how many pizzas are being baked at one time so the air jets can ramp up or scale back accordingly. Urso says the PS 670 model double conveyor oven can bake 375 large pizzas in an hour.
Cooking time: Just over 4 minutes to 10 minutes, depending on type
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Heat: 495 degrees
Weighs: 2,600 pounds
205 S. Waukegan Road, Lake Bluff, 847-735-8900; 1925 S. Plum Grove Road, Rolling Meadows, 847-359-7900; www.donatispizza.com
Spacca Napoli
Oven: Agliarulo custom-built wood-fired brick pizza oven
Bragging rights: Spacca Napoli’s oven was built on-site by third- and fourth-generation members of the Agliarulo family, noted Neapolitan oven builders, with three kinds of brick, three types of sand and tufo (volcanic stone) imported from Italy, says restaurateur Jonathan Goldsmith. The beehive-shaped oven, faced with Venetian glass tile, is adorned with the restaurant’s logo, three wheat spikes inspired by an ancient coin design. The burnished copper-colored oven quietly dominates the open kitchen of this Ravenswood restaurant. Three, maybe four, pizzas can be cooked at one time, which at times led to delays during busy serving times, according to Goldsmith. His solution? A second, slightly smaller oven (similarly shaped and tiled like the bigger oven but with one decorative wheat spike) was to be built this fall, again by the Agliarulos using Italian materials.
Cooking time: 60 to 90 seconds
Heat: 850 degrees, although the oven could be stoked up to 1,500 degrees (better for glass blowing, not for pizza, Goldsmith says).
Weighs: 12,000 pounds
1769 W. Sunnyside Ave., 773-878-2420; www.spaccanapolipizzeria.com
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