Current Model P Smart Pizza Oven assessment: sensible tech, crispy crusts

I’m a wonderful residence cook dinner, if I do say so myself. I recurrently produce restaurant-quality dishes from my sensible kitchen. But I’ve two favourite dishes I’ve by no means mastered at residence: pizza and burgers. Yes, I could make them, however do they style pretty much as good as my native burger or pizza joint? Nope. Naturally, I used to be intrigued once I heard concerning the new sensible pizza oven from Current, which launched at CES earlier this yr.

Yes, I do know pizza ovens have been a factor for some time with their attractive promise of constructing pizzeria-quality pizza at residence. But they’re eye-wateringly costly, and I’ve at all times been postpone by the prospect of placing a wooden or gas-burning equipment in my yard for the only objective of constructing pizza. Current’s Model P Smart Pizza Oven is electrical, so there’s no must mess with gas, plus it may be used open air and inside (in principle — however my preliminary makes an attempt produced far an excessive amount of smoke for indoor use to be viable).

The Model P prices $699, which is loads, however considerably lower than different choices; the electrical model of the favored Ooni oven is $899 with none related options. Current is a startup primarily based in Columbus, Georgia, that’s making an attempt to affect out of doors cooking (its first product was a wise electrical out of doors grill). Its sensible pizza oven is among the first to function an app for controlling the oven, with the selection of a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection. The app has a number of instruments that promise to assist me make the right pizza. Challenge accepted.

The Model P can attain a blistering 850 levels Fahrenheit. It cycles energy between graphite tubes on the prime and customary calrod heating components on the underside, and it makes use of proprietary algorithms to cook dinner three totally different kinds: Neapolitan, New York, and skinny crust. There’s additionally a frozen pizza setting and a broil operate, which you should use for any meals that might profit from a broil (resembling searing a steak or browning some veggies), providing you with a bit extra performance.

It comes with a 12-inch cordierite cooking stone, however you must purchase the pizza peel individually, which is required to pop the dough into the oven with out burning your fingers. Current despatched me a wood one, which it says will probably be accessible quickly; there’s a $89 metal model that you would be able to purchase bundled with the oven and a pizza cutter for $847.

The Current Backyard app (iOS and Android) permits for cellular management of the oven, sends notifications for preheating and cooking timers, and has a pizza construct calculator that adjusts the cooking time primarily based on how skinny your crust is and the way excessive you pile your pizza.

As the pizza cooks in round two minutes, the alerts for preheating (which takes some time) and the pizza calculator had been probably the most helpful, as my previous makes an attempt at do-it-yourself pizzas typically resulted in soggy toppings and undercooked crusts.

To put the Model P by its paces, I invited a couple of pals over for a pizza social gathering and set it up on a wood desk on my porch, a couple of inches away from a brick wall. You have to think about placement fastidiously as a result of it will get extremely popular. It’s elevated by 4 steel legs, so it’s secure to make use of on most surfaces. (There’s an outside pizza cart accessible for $499 if you would like one thing extra tailor-made.)

Current recommends making your personal pizza dough, and there’s a recipe within the app you possibly can observe. Current additionally recommends store-bought dough from Trader Joe’s and Publix; I went for the simple choice.

I arrange an indoor pizza-making station, with a big wood slicing board, plenty of flour, a number of parts of Trader Joe’s pizza dough and premade pizza sauce, and a few customary toppings: mozzarella, pepperoni, olives, and basil. We then proceeded to go loopy twirling dough and topping pizzas.

Our first few pizzas had been a little bit of a catastrophe. We made a plain mozzarella pizza on New York-style (635F) and adopted the urged six minutes of oven time, but it surely got here out overcooked. The subsequent try had too many toppings, and the dough acquired caught to the pizza peel mid-flick, launching cheese and pepperoni onto the molten stone, leading to a smoky mess.

I did like the choice to make concurrent pizzas with a button press — no want to begin the preheat over. And not having to rotate the pizza, mixed with getting alerts on my cellphone when the pie was prepared, meant I didn’t should hover over it.

But by our third pizza, the stone had a thick layer of burnt cheese on it, so I needed to cease the social gathering and return to the slicing board.

I spotted I had been too keen, assuming the oven would magically ship good pizzas. It seems that there was fairly a bit extra prep I wanted to do, an important being shopping for a bag of semolina flour. Apparently, it is a magic pizza-making ingredient.

I went again to Current for extra ideas — particularly about cleansing the stone, which must be accomplished fastidiously. It can’t be soaked or scrubbed with something extra abrasive than a nylon brush. I purchased some new dough and adopted Current’s detailed YouTube video on how you can correctly roll it out (sadly, no twirling required). I then fired up the app to make use of the neat pizza builder device that customizes the cook dinner time primarily based on model, dough kind, and thickness, in addition to how a lot sauce, cheese, and toppings you might have.

Armed with semolina and a tad extra endurance, my subsequent try was with the Neapolitan model, which yields a crispier pizza and makes use of the oven’s prime temperature of 850F to get these signature burnt leopard spots. This is the kind of pizza you eat at a sidewalk cafe in Italy. The draw back was that it took some time to warmth up, however the pizza solely took two minutes to cook dinner.

I used to be extra profitable, producing an nearly good Neapolitan-style buffalo mozzarella and pepperoni pizza with a delightfully puffy (if barely misshapen) crust. There was nonetheless a good quantity of smoke, although, and my husband (who’s a firefighter) remains to be not eager on me utilizing the oven indoors.

My solely different grievance is that the cheese wasn’t sizzling right through; subsequent time, I’ll go for thinner slices. I then popped in a extra conventional shredded mozzarella pizza for my daughter, going with New York-style as she likes the softer crust. After two bites, she declared it was pretty much as good as her favourite cheese pizza from Pisanos, our favourite native spot.

Hardware-wise, the oven’s glossy, domed design and glass door would look nice on a kitchen counter — you probably have the area. At simply over 40 kilos, it’s not that moveable, but it surely feels stable and properly constructed. The on-device controls embrace a big LCD show with contact controls for turning the facility on and off and setting a timer. This is paired with a bodily dial to regulate time and temperature and choose totally different pizza kinds.

I want to see a bodily on / off button, as I fear concerning the longevity of a touchscreen on a tool that can be utilized open air. (It isn’t waterproof, so that you shouldn’t go away it uncovered.) Although I might management all of the capabilities within the app, together with turning it off. But, as with most high-heat sensible home equipment, you must verify on the system to show it on for apparent security causes.

I loved utilizing the oven, and it’s a nice piece of package for a yard social gathering, however I don’t see including it to my common cooking routine. Making pizza is an artwork that I’m removed from mastering, even with the Model P’s superior tech. While it introduced me nearer to being a pizza apprentice, it additionally bolstered that, for me, pizza night time means not cooking. Pisanos can relaxation simple — pizza supply night time isn’t going anyplace.

Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge