Breville Smart Oven® Pizzaiolo, BPZ800 2018

Designers: Breville Global Design Team, Breville Group, Alexandria, New South Wales, Australia
Manufacturer: Breville Group, Alexandria, New South Wales, Australia

The Smart Oven® Pizzaiolo is the world’s first domestic, indoor, counter-top oven that is capable of cooking an authentic wood fired-style pizza in under two minutes.

There is no indoor, domestic pizza oven currently available that can reach 750° F, nor is there any on the market with three different independently controlled heating elements that can be tailored to a particular pizza style based on the pie’s optimum heat distribution requirement.

In addition, the upper, outer heating element of the oven was designed with an internal heating wire that has a unique non-uniform coil-pitch. This non-uniform coil-pitch creates a more intense radiant heat source at the front of the oven, compensating for the asymmetric cooking chamber and viewing window, resulting in an oven where users can achieve an evenly cooked pizza without the need to rotate their pizzas while they’re cooking.

Complementing the aforementioned heating elements, are vertical concentric heat shields that were developed to control and direct radiant energy to specific areas of the pizza. This innovation, for instance, makes the much sought-after leopard-spotted crust -- synonymous with Neapolitan pizzas -- possible while at the same time protecting delicate toppings, such as basil and buffalo mozzarella, from the intense radiant energy.

The Smart Oven® Pizzaiolo has an intuitive set of pre-sets for different types of pizza (e.g. Pan, New York, Thin & Crispy, Wood Fired, 750° F) as well as a Manual mode that allows the user to independently control the oven’s deck temperature, the cavity’s air temperature and the amount of radiant energy applied to the crust and the toppings. These are a more refined set of options than a wood-fired oven can offer. By offering both pre-sets and manual control, the oven has been designed to appeal to both beginners as well as experts who want to fully customize their bakes.

There is, of course, a limited power supply that can be drawn from a standard 120V circuit, so the key to achieving the cooking performance of this oven was reducing the distance between the pizza and the radiant heating elements above. If a conventional static-deck had been employed, the size of the cooking cavity would have needed to be so narrow as to make the act of loading and unloading a pizza prohibitively difficult for beginner pizza-makers. The invention of the moving, active-deck gives users easy access to the deck when loading and unloading their pizzas while also raising their pizza closer to the heat source during the cooking cycle. This moving active-deck as well as the oven’s extraordinary insulation, reduce the risk of users being burned while using the product.

Cooking a pizza in two minutes or less requires an oven capable of generating and sustaining an unprecedented consumer oven temperature (750°F). This led to the challenge of keeping all the machine’s critical electrical components cool and functional. This was achieved by strategic insulation design, dedicated cooling pathways and component layout. The result was not only an oven where all sensitive electronics are protected from exposure to high temperatures but a counter-top oven with a small footprint that users can comfortably rest their hands atop of while running at 750°F.

With a small countertop footprint, and a weight of only 28 pounds, The Smart Oven® Pizzaiolo brings professional quality pizza into the home and exponentially expands the number of people around the world now able to recreate pizza to the same level they’ve become accustomed to or desire to achieve.