I started this new hobby a couple of months ago and have made like 40-50 pizzas in my oven with a pizza stone. The better I got at making the dough, the more I wanted to have a dedicated Pizza oven, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Glowen Raptor and some accessories (small table, turning peel, stretchy cloth cover) and it took a few weeks to arrive.
I immediately tried it out the day I received it. I prepared a fresh 48 hours 100% biga with 70% hydration. The first three images show the results from this session. The burnt one on picture 3 was the very first pizza… I couldn't handle the heat and also using the turning peel was a new experience, so that was a bit of a fail but also somewhat expected. I turned down the heat and was relatively happy with the other results.
Today I also tried some dough I still had in my freezer, that's the pizza on slide 4. The dough didn't puff up as much but that's what I also noticed in my regular oven when using dough from the freezer. I brought the stone temp to roughly 420°C and turned the flame way down for the actual cooking process and got some good results as well. It's going to be a learning process to get the right amount of heat and to master turning the pizza.
But man I can already say that it's super fun. For anyone who isn't sure about getting a pizza oven: it's worth it. The dough tastes "fresher" to me if that makes any sense, it comes out relatively dry from the regular oven with a baking stone, that's probably due to the much longer time it takes to fully cook the pizza. Same for the toppings, the cheese has more flavor to me. Also finally getting color on the bottom on the pizza is great, really adds to the flavor, though I wouldn't mind if it gets even more charr in my next sessions. I feel like I still have a lot to learn but I'm incredibly happy with the results for my two very first baking sessions. The leoparding turned out a lot better than expected, to have any leoparding at all felt like a great success.
To anyone also owning a pizza oven and especially to the Glowen Raptor / Dragon owners: what did you do to get your pizza to the next level? Any tips on heat handling, any special dough ingredients?
by dodo667418