It’s time to take your pizza cooking to the next level. You may not be able to build a full-scale brick oven in your backyard (or even have a backyard), but you can bring that artisan pizza experience to your kitchen.
An indoor pizza oven allows you more control over your pizza without having to waste time and energy fooling with your oven. An indoor pizza oven is a great way to customize your controls, cook different types of pizzas, and get off your counter when you aren’t using it.
Our list of pizza ovens offers you the convenience and flexibility of a pizza oven. The Wisco 421 offers efficient cooking and excellent temperature adjustments. Still, we also have everything from a high tech, high-temperature Breville to a gas range adaptor that operates more like a wood-fired oven. Your perfect pizza is on its way.
At A Glance
- Wisco 421 Pizza Oven – Best Overall
- Oster Convection Oven With Pizza Drawer – Best Multipurpose Option
- Breville Pizzaiolo – Best Splurge
- Betty Crocker Pizza Maker – Budget Choice
- Presto Pizazz Rotating Oven – Best Compact Option
- Bakerstone Pizza Box – Best Indoor/Outdoor Option
Best Overall: Wisco 421 Pizza Oven
Our top pick overall is Wisco’s 421 model. It offers a compact, reliable pizza oven with space for up to a 12-inch pizza. It’s electric and can sit on any flat surface you have in your kitchen. It takes about five minutes to preheat, getting your pizza done earlier.
Digital controls offer temperature adjustments and the ability to cook both frozen and homemade options. Pizza turns out crispy and well-cooked without much effort, and it requires no rotation for even cooking. There’s no unique set up involved; you can start preparing your favorite pizza right out of the box.
It’s medium-sized for a portable appliance, so you may need to measure your space for the right placement. The Wisco 421 doesn’t offer any kind of wood-fired taste or grilled options, and it’s just a dedicated pizza oven. However, for those of you who are big fans of pizza, it’s a wonderful option for well-cooked pizza.
Best Multipurpose Option: Oster Convection Oven With Pizza Drawer
Oster’s convection oven offers the convenience of a single appliance with a pizza drawer. Those of you with smaller kitchens might welcome the idea of having a multipurpose appliance. The top portion is an efficient convection oven capable of cooking at temperatures up to 450 degrees and a bottom drawer capable of cooking a pizza up to 12 inches.
Turbo convection heat technology provides even and fast cooking for when you don’t want to heat up your whole oven. It offers warm, toast, broil, and bake options, plus a turbo choice. It comes with a 60-minute timer with a bell letting you know cooking has finished.
The brushed steel exterior offers a modern take for small appliances, and recessed handles for the bottom drawer create a cleaner silhouette for your countertop. The Oster Convection Oven cooks everything from pies to pizza to casseroles.
Best Splurge: Breville Pizzaiolo
Breville makes small premium appliances that look great and offer all the extra details you need in a premium model. This pizza oven is the first household oven to offer temperatures up to 750 degrees, providing a nearly professional finish to any pizza you have.
It’s designed to cook a pizza more closely to a wood-fired oven using three kinds of heat, radiant, conductive, and convective. It offers the element IQ system using advanced sensors for temperature control and optimized deflector technology to adjust heating elements for an absolutely even cooking experience without rotation.
The Breville Pizzaiolo features a brushed stainless exterior with an integrated stone heating element for a natural char to the bottom of the pizza. It has seven different cooking presets plus a manual mode, and it can cook up to a single 12-inch pizza as quickly as two minutes.
Budget Choice: Betty Crocker Pizza Maker
Betty Crocker’s pizza maker cooks quite a few things and offers a budget choice for occasional pizza use. It features a fast heating element with a lid that closes for even temperatures and well-cooked pizza every time.
It accommodates pizza up to 12 inches, and can also handle things like quesadillas or other grilled style foods. It’s dishwasher-safe and highly efficient, allowing you to store it easily out of sight when you don’t need it.
It features a power-on light and a ready light. The nonstick surface helps prevent stuck-on food, even with complicated foods like cheese. The Betty Crocker Pizza Maker also has a cord wrap for easy storage and a floating hinge for easier operation.
Best Compact Option: Presto Pizazz Rotating Oven
Presto is a uniquely designed pizza oven with a rotating pad that offers even cooking. The bottom heating element handles the crust for a crispier result, and the top heating element provides excellent results, melting the cheese quickly.
The heating elements are separately controlled, giving you a customized cooking experience for each type of pizza you have. You can also select only the top, only bottom, or both elements for efficient cooking. It has a timer and an auto-off function to prevent burning, plus a signal to let you know when cooking is finished.
You can remove the nonstick baking pan for easy cleaning. The Presto Pizazz Rotating Oven requires no preheating and cooks in about half the time of a conventional oven. It accommodates up to 12-inch pizzas and cleans easily. The bottom pan removes for more accessible storage.
Best Indoor/Outdoor Option: Bakerstone Pizza Box
This versatile accessory gives you quite a few different options for cooking. It works with both your gas range and your grill, offering both indoor and outdoor capability. It cooks in roughly two to four minutes, depending on your conditions.
It’s capable of cooking at higher temperatures than most small appliance pizza ovens, giving you temps up to 600 to 800 degrees. It has a double-walled construction to help keep temperatures consistent for a wood-fired consistency.
It’s not suitable for electric ranges or induction cooktops, and gas ovens with top-facing knobs aren’t eligible. However, the Bakerstone Pizza Box is a great, versatile appliance for indoor/outdoor capabilities and stores easily when it’s not in use.
How do you make a good pizza in the oven?
One of the best tricks for cooking pizza in the oven is getting a high enough temperature for a crisp finish. People make the mistake of cooking at too low of a temperature for the dough, leaving it floppy or soggy at the finish.
Five-hundred-fifty degrees or higher is a good rule of thumb, but you’ll want to experiment a bit with your pizzas to find the right setting for your dough and your particular appliance. You may also need to precook the dough to provide a crispier base for the pizza, allowing you to get the texture you need without burning the toppings.
Do you bake pizza before adding the toppings?
If you start from scratch, you need to bake the dough a bit before adding the toppings. If you don’t, you won’t be able to get the right amount of crispiness in your crust before burning the toppings. If possible, prep and cook your dough well before you add any of the toppings or the sauce so it doesn’t end up soggy.
Ready-made pizzas have crusts already baked, so you don’t have to worry about it. In that case, you only need to ensure the cheese is melted before pulling it out of the oven. Otherwise, it’s cook-and-go.
What makes a pizza oven different?
Pizza ovens often include specialized cooking surfaces designed to better crisp the bottom of the pizza without burning the toppings. The temperature can be challenging to get right when you have disparate elements like bread and cheese. Without a good cooking surface, you won’t get the right consistency to the crust.
Pizza ovens also have more intricate controls. Some on the list allows you to choose different controls for the top and bottom heating elements, allowing you to customize your pizza fully for the best results.
Why are pizza ovens so hot?
Without higher heat, it’s impossible to manage the crispiness of the crust. High heat is what makes wood-fired ovens and brick ovens such a great way to make artisanal pizzas, so indoor ovens need higher temperatures to get close to that type of effect.
Those high temperatures also cook cheese better, not only melting it but browning the top perfectly. Although ready-made pizzas are often cooked at a lower temperature, if you’re making your own, you want that high-temperature boost.
How do I bake a pizza?
Whether you’re cooking in the conventional oven or a pizza oven, there are a few things to keep in mind. You need a higher temperature to ensure proper crust and cheese results. At least 450 degrees should do the trick, although higher temperatures may produce better results. Be sure to pre-bake your crust as well.
You don’t want to use a pan or cover when you’re cooking your pizza. Unless it’s a specially made stone, using a cover or pan prevents the pizza from being crisp and getting those “grill marks” just right. You want to keep an eye on the crust and cheese, ensuring that the crust is a golden brown and the cheese is melted and with a few browned spots for extra texture.
What is the better: Electric or gas pizza ovens?
Most indoor models are going to be electric, and if you can get the temperature high enough, that’s the most crucial part. They come in a range of budgets and aren’t quite as much to maintain during operation.
Gas ovens aren’t as standard for indoor products, but they do produce pizzas that don’t taste like mass-produced, ready-made options. They are more involved with maintenance, however, and could need some labor to keep operational.
How do I choose the right pizza oven?
You could consider a few different things before deciding on the indoor oven for you. First, how often do you make pizza? If it’s only an occasional thing, you may not want a big, dedicated pizza oven. You may need something multifunctional, like our Oster selection. That way, you have other options for when you want something other than pizza.
If pizza is really your thing, something with proper ventilation and excellent temperature controls help get the crispiness you want without burning your pizza. You can choose different controls for the top and the bottom, allowing you more customization for the final result.
You should also consider the space that you have, both for storage and for when you’re cooking. Many ovens are on the smaller side, so you won’t need a ton of counter space, but you should always measure your cabinet height and counter depth to ensure you have space for the appliance and clearance for venting.
Are pizza ovens safe?
They are very safe for indoor use (provided you purchase an indoor oven), but you’ll want to be careful during operation. They can often reach a much higher temperature than standard appliances, so the risk of burns is higher.
Ensure that you never store anything on top of your pizza oven and that you have plenty of clearance for cooking. The temperatures are far too high, and you’ll need ventilation space to ensure proper air circulation within the oven.
Never allow your children to operate a pizza oven. These temperatures can quickly become too hot to manage and could be dangerous. Never leave the pizza oven unattended for those same reasons. The temperatures are far too high to operate safely without constant supervision.
How did Digital Trends choose the best indoor pizza ovens?
Digital Trends looked at lots of different models and chose options that were highly rated with plenty of functionality. Each model is suitable for indoor use and gets to higher temperatures to ensure a crispy crust and well-melted cheese.
The pizza ovens on this list have things like presets that provide better cooking results. Some allow you to choose different settings for the top and bottom heating elements. There are high tech options with integrated sensors that provide customized and automated cooking.
Most of these allow you to experiment with your pizza settings, changing things around until you have the right results you want for your pizza. These ovens provide consistent — and more importantly, high — temperatures that allow a crispier finish.
There are even convection options, allowing you to use your appliance for more than just pizza. Smaller kitchens will be glad to cut down on the appliances taking up counter space and build a multifunctional kitchen.
