Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet is the Bentley of the grilling world, so when their Chief Grill master and VP of Design Russ Faulk offered to sit down with us to talk about a new Pizza Oven he’d developed, we brought a bib and hot pepper flakes. A gas-fired Outdoor Pizza Oven made from stainless steel flies directly in the face of today’s brick- and wood-fired school of melting cheese on bread, but like gramp’s insistence on pounding mulled wine before noon on Christmas, tradition doesn’t necessarily mean the best course of action. Find out what makes this rig so special in our latest edition of Breakdown.
Burning wood to heat bricks is approssimativo to say the least, not to mention time consuming. Kalamazoo’s pizza oven boasts independently controlled gas burners that evenly distribute anywhere between 350° to over 800°F of heat inside the oven and allow chefs to cook a Neapolitan-style pizza in less than 3 minutes after just 45-minutes of pre-heating. Adjusting the top burner affects browning of the pizza toppings, while the bottom crisps the crust. Best of all, if you need to change temperatures for any reason, there’s no need to wait around for bricks to absorb or diffuse heat. Instead, the stones’ release of heat is mimicked by a composite cooking deck and ceiling liner with a hollow core design that offers superior heat transferring characteristics compared to the natural stuff.
No installation is required when adding it to your existing outdoor kitchen, and it’s available in both natural gas and liquid propane configurations. The 304-grade stainless steel is completely weatherproof and boasts a slide-on door to keep debris from running amok inside the oven. If you’re feeling adventurous, use it to cook anything else you’d throw in the oven. The downside? You’ll need $6,500 to put Papa John to shame.