Hey, David here with The Barbecue Lab, bringing you the best outdoor cooking
gear and techniques to help you win your weekend. In the outdoor cooking world,
there's nothing quite as hot as outdoor pizza ovens right now, and Alfa Ovens
has been creating them for over 40 years. In this video, we're going to be talking
about the Alfa Allegro and how you can cook more than just pizza in this oven...
coming up.
Hey, we're with Michael here from Alfa Ovens, and Michael tell me a little bit
about this this oven and what is it that's really taking this market segment and
just blasting it through the roof right now. What's so hot about pizza ovens?
Well, I will tell you that what's making the category go up is that it's just extremely
fun to cook your own pizzas and other foods in these ovens in your backyard.
A couple of things that really set us apart from our competition is our
flue system. We do not have a hole in our ceiling we have a baffle flue here so
that gives you more circulation and allows the temperature to heat up much
faster. You can be cooking pizzas in here in about 30 minutes. Your typical
brick-and-mortar pizza ovens they'll take 3-4 hours to heat up.
So, in no time at all you can be cooking food.
Is that due to the baffle system or is it due
to the refractory brick? The refractory brick is better for your pizza, now that gets
hot and stays hot longer. It's better than your traditional ceramic or lava
stone base that most of other people are using.
But, the refractory brick is manufactured in scratch at our Factory just south of
Rome in Italy. So these are coming straight from Italy
you guys are bringing them overseas, and then you're actually distributing
them through different store fronts? Correct. We are setting up a retail
storefront throughout the whole U.S. We're the master distributor based in Chicago.
We have about 160 storefronts right now and we're growing fast.
The category's exploding, we're expecting our numbers to double this year from last year.
Wow. So, tell me a little bit about like, this is not just for pizzas. This is
for all different types of food, so walk me through a little bit more
rather than just pizza, what are we looking at?
So, you're cooking with a live wood flame.
So, you know one of the things that's hot right now is when you go out to
restaurants they're cooking on wood flame pizza ovens and things like that.
But the flame of the wood gets very hot, okay? So, if you're thinking about
something like a steak you're cooking a steak at 900 degrees Fahrenheit with a
flame roaring across the top of the oven and a cast-iron pan on the bottom, you're
cooking from the bottom up in the top down so you can cook your steak just
like a Ruth's Chris or Mortons or anything like that.
It'll be crispy charred on the outside nice medium, medium-rare
on the inside. So, you have like a wood-fired salamander? That's right.
and you're talking about you can get this amazing crust because you're using
that cast iron, and the sear from the top flame. The flame is literally
curving around the top of that stainless steel chamber. Wow.
So, I've also heard that someone is crazy enough to use this as a smoker, so give
me the idea of like, how am I gonna use a pizza oven that's known for nine hundred
degrees, as a smoker. So, you can use lump charcoal in here as well as wood.
So you get your coals going and you throw a few pieces of lump charcoal in there
and then you can use the door to regulate your air temperature to get the
coals, depending on what temperature you want to do
and then if you want to bake something at 350 degrees 400 degrees
it'll stay at that temperature for long periods of time.
If you're getting value from this video, be sure to hit the like button for us.
Alright, back to the content.
So, one of the things, I mean I feel like is making this category just
explode is that this is just more fun than your traditional, "I'm gonna go stick
a pizza on a egg style grill." Right, exactly. So, you can entertain family
friends, you know, if your kids are in sports and their teammates come
over and everybody hangs around the oven and you're cooking pizzas, you're
hanging out, you're entertaining. Everybody's having fun. The kids are
making pizza as your co-workers are making pizzas, you can do contests for
who makes the best pizza. You know, it's just a lot of fun to be at entertaining and
have it in the back yard. So, we're talking about pizzas, like how long does it really take to
make a pizza in this oven? From the time you put the pizza in the oven to the
time you take it out, about 90 seconds. 90 seconds? Yeah, now can you actually do
things like deep-dish in an oven like this? Yes, but you're gonna have to use a lower temperature on your
cook because the deep dish pizzas have to stay in there for about a 15 to 20 minute cook
depending on what kind of Detroit style or Chicago deep-dish style
pizza that you're doing, and you'll want to use a pan for that. Right. So you're talking more
Neapolitan style pizza? Right, the Neapolitan styles are the ones that are
done about 90 seconds. Wow. And everything is based on your dough, okay?
This pizza oven will cook anything spectacularly, but the dough is what makes
the pizza. If you want a traditional really thin flat bread, cracker-crust
kind of pizza, you have to make a dough to get that result. If you want a
traditional Neapolitan style pizza, then you need a
Neapolitan style dough that's gonna give you that round crust, the doughy crust but
still the flat bottom, crispy... Now, are there recipes on the website that are
going to help you with those? We have recipes, we have a recipe book that could
be downloaded on there as well. We also have YouTube videos, we have social media
with a bunch of people cooking and sharing their recipes online as well.
Well hey, Michael it's been a pleasure getting to know Alfa Ovens. I look forward to
seeing more about you guys online.
Yeah, and I Iook forward to working with you guys
at The Barbecue Lab.
Cool, thanks man. Yeah, thank you.
Question of the day: Are you currently using an outdoor oven in your outdoor
cooking setup? What's your favorite thing to cook with it? Let us know in the
comments section below, as well as your thoughts on this new wave hitting the
outdoor cooking market. And if you want to check out some of our other coverage
from the BBQ Expo, we've got a whole playlist out and we'll link it up in the
youtube card as well as in the description below and I'll see you next
time right here on The Barbecue Lab.
you