Ambrogi professional ovens for pizzerias

Choosing a professional oven for a pizzeria is one of the most important decisions for anyone operating in the sector. Ambrogi designs and builds high-quality ovens whose every detail is conceived to ensure perfect pizza cooking and guarantee maximum customer satisfaction. Ambrogi supples wood or gas fuelled ovens of different sizes and technical specifications to suit the client’s needs, depending on the space available and the number of pizzas needed to be cooked simultaneously. Construction materials are guaranteed and certified for the specific purpose of food cooking; furthermore, they ensure exceptional performance and thus optimisation of costs. And every oven is beautifully crafted. Maintenance is extremely simple too: when carried out regularly and correctly, the oven is guaranteed to work perfectly for many years.

But how can you choose the oven best suited to your needs? To assist clients choosing their first pizza oven or who already have experience in the sector but seek greater detail about the characteristics of this important piece of equipment, here’s a brief guide to choosing your wood-fired oven.

The evolution of the wood oven: materials and shapes

 When it comes to pizza, one of the questions asked is whether it’s cooked in a wood oven or not. Indeed, Neapolitan tradition demands that this delicious food is cooked in wood ovens to ensure optimal results and a soft crust, and to bring it to the table as quickly as possible. Over time, professional pizza ovens have obviously advanced and modernised: today’s market offers specific solutions with shapes and sizes that can be customised for the needs of different businesses.

In recent years, gas cooking of pizzas has gained ground. The installation of a gas burner in a pizza oven avoids the problems of soot and ash and difficulties associated with storing wood, making the oven more practical to use. Simple use is guaranteed by intuitive electronic temperature control. And all this without altering the characteristics of the oven itself.

Some of the main advantages of Ambrogi ovens are undoubtedly related to energy consumption: our pizza ovens are designed to ensure correct heat diffusion, which improves performance and reduces the consumption of wood or gas. Energy saving is actually one of the primary aims of modern oven designers like Ambrogi. Of course, the reason is not merely to reduce costs, but also concern for the environment, leading today’s restaurant owners increasingly to seek green solutions, both for their premises and their ovens.

This is why choosing the right materials is essential for the design of professional pizza ovens. In Ambrogi products, only refractory terracotta is used for cooking surfaces; this is imperative to guarantee the high temperatures required for cooking pizzas. Domes are made using vibrated refractory concrete with high alumina cement. The term refractory, with reference to the materials used for cooking surfaces and domes, indicates an excellent ability to accumulate heat, retaining it inside the oven and avoiding wasteful dispersion. This ensures that cooking is always rapid and homogeneous, as tradition dictates. Moreover, these materials allow high temperatures to be reached in a short time, thus optimising the use of wood or gas.

Research into thermodynamics and structures has also led to the identification of the most suitable shapes for these particular materials, in order to guarantee heat retention and correct diffusion inside the oven. This is why the cooking chambers in Ambrogi ovens are built in specific shapes, analysed for every size, which combine design and technology for perfect pizza cooking. The best design is a domed cooking chamber: to understand why, bear in mind that hot air tends to rise, creating currents within the oven. The designer’s task is to ascertain the best height and size of the dome to ensure that the air flows always retain the right temperature for the goal – perfect pizza cooking.

Thermodynamics also provides the knowledge that enables us to include what is commonly known as a thermal flywheel beneath the cooking surface. The heat produced on the cooking surface is not only directed inside the oven to cook the pizzas, it is also sent under the surface, by means of conduction. Constructing a thermal flywheel involves choosing materials to place under the cooking surface which can ensure the heat is appropriately retained; this provides an excellent store of accumulated heat, which is essential to maintain the correct thermal equilibrium, in other words to prevent temperature surges and dips that may compromise cooking.

The correct size for an oven

 A wood-fired pizza oven should always be chosen on the basis of size. As mentioned previously, certain fundamental aspects should be taken into account, such as the size of the pizzeria and the number of pizzas normally produced.

Thanks to the materials and the shape of the cooking chamber discussed above, Ambrogi ovens have the great advantage of maintaining a constant and even temperature throughout the working day. This means pizzas can be cooked continuously without interruption, guaranteeing a high output even with smaller ovens.

The modern, sophisticated design of Ambrogi professional pizza ovens also gives any establishment a distinctive style. The oven becomes a genuine, aesthetically pleasing part of the decor.

The ideal temperature for pizza cooking

 Size, shape and materials are chosen to guarantee heat retention and circulation inside the oven, but above all to ensure the correct temperature for pizza cooking, on the basis of the type of dough and pizza required.

The correct oven temperature is an important consideration. Different types of dough require different temperatures.

Ambrogi ovens perfectly cook all types of pizza and are ideal for reaching and maintaining the high temperatures (400°- 450°C) needed for Neapolitan pizzas as well as lower temperatures for other types of pizza.

Inside the oven, pizzas are cooked by direct flame. Thanks to the specific shape of the domes of Ambrogi ovens, a natural flow of air is created inside the chamber, which serves to keep the temperature even and ensure uniform cooking.
Pizza ovens designed by Ambrogi feature cooking chambers which cool slowly, and this is a real advantage. An oven that cools slowly can be brought back to cooking temperature more easily than one which cools faster. This means that pizzerias serving both lunch and dinner will find the oven still warm in the morning, when it’s time to prepare pizzas for midday. It also means energy savings, since reheating an oven from an already high temperature (which may be more than 200°C) is far simpler and faster in energy terms than starting with a cold oven.

Another important consideration is that slow-cooling ovens suffer less thermal shock than those which fall from 400°C to room temperature quickly; so besides being more heat-efficient, the materials used in our ovens will last longer, since they are less subject to sudden and frequent temperature changes.

The type of wood used in the oven is closely linked to the temperatures reached. Wood used to cook pizzas must always be completely dry. Using wood which is treated, damp or resinous will have a negative impact on the results and the maintenance of the oven.

In conclusion

 Owners of pizzerias and restaurants who need to install a professional pizza oven can put their trust in Ambrogi, specialists in the design and construction of pizza ovens. Ambrogi is backed by long experience in the field of wood and gas pizza ovens, and since 1939 it has been a genuine benchmark in terms of solutions to guarantee quality, design and durability. All the technical criteria for the construction of a pizza oven are implemented by our in-house experts in order to guarantee the highest quality results, in other words, ovens that are built entirely by hand using top-quality materials whose suitability is guaranteed by Ambrogi.

Over the years, Ambrogi products have adapted to the demands of the market, and in response to the many clients all over the world who put their trust in the Milanese firm.

Cost is an aspect which must be considered. The savings guaranteed by Ambrogi are not merely associated with our highly competitive prices, but also with the advantages of ovens which can optimise energy consumption and generate considerable savings.

Indeed, our engineers aim specifically to build ovens that can increase output and reduce energy use, while improving performance and respecting the environment. So choosing an Ambrogi professional pizza oven means finding the perfect balance between quality, convenience and respect for the environment, thanks to our meticulous production processes.