The RVA Pizza Guide: I Was Made for Oven You, Baby | Richmond Magazine
Kristel Poole
Take a peek inside the kiln to learn how pizza gets made
by Jason Tesauro, January 23, 2017
“I call her my fire-breathing dragon,” says Jenna Sneed, chef and owner of Fresca on Addison. “She has a personality and you have to talk to her sweetly.” Sneed keeps her gas-powered dome humming at 800 degrees all day; it can’t run below 500 overnight, “or else it takes too long to heat back up.”
At its heart, an oven is about two things: temperature and heat distribution. While most any oven will make good pizza, strict certifications, precise ratios and refraction dictate a great oven’s floor runs at 750 to 800 degrees, while the dome nears 1,000. At these temps, dough cooks in 90 seconds. And when a pizza is lifted to the dome, toppings are blistered in even fewer. “But it’s not easy to use,” says Randall Doetzer, executive chef of Nota Bene. He spins pizzas around the deck to work his Neapolitan oven’s hot and cold spots. “With so many variables, I can do a hundred pizzas just fine and then wreck the next one. It’s humbling.”
Then there’s the fuel. Wood is sexy, but it’s also dirty, full of oils and tough to control. Coal is cleaner but it’s hard to get the fire started, and more difficult to master. Lots of pizzerias keep oven-side piles of cordwood or coal, but don’t get burned by marketing; if that wood or coal isn’t the primary heat source, it’s just a fancified gas oven.