In Defense of the Deck by M. Binder

Article Courtesy of Pizza Today Magazine

While conveyors and the new technology ovens corner the market on the high tech side the venerable deck oven hangs on with a large share of the pizza market. Chances are that if you aren’t baking in a deck, your competition down the street or around the cor­ner is. Why is the deck oven so popu­lar? What are the advantages and dis­advantages of cooking pizza the old fashioned way? And does it still make economic sense to spill the cornmeal on the peel and rotate pizzas the way chefs have for centuries? Absolutely. Even today, about 75 per­cent of the pizza ovens sold by Blodgett and 50 percent of those sold by Bakers Pride are decks. The two big reasons for this are cost and quality. Most pizza makers begin with a deck oven because ifs inexpensive to buy. When you’re opening a restaurant, everything costs money from leases and licensing to cash registers, supplies and that all important neon “Pizza” sign. If you are able to purchase less costly equipment without shaving quality, then you’re going to do it.

A deck oven is a huge steel box with electric or gas heating elements and ei­ther a steel or stone “deck” on which the pizza is cooked. The moving parts are minimal thermostats, heating baffles to (on rare occasions) let the ex­tra heat escape and a front door. Con­veyor ovens, on the other hand, have complicated machinery and many mov­ing parts. The difference is reflected in the price.

“Conveyors cost quite a bit more, says David Condon, chef and product support specialist at Bakers Pride in New Rochelle, New York, one of the largest makers of deck ovens in the United States. “You’re probably going to double or triple your initial investment by going with a conveyor oven as opposed to a deck. Also, depending on the conveyor, most conveyers are more ex­pensive to operate. To get into the pizza business, which is a very lucrative cash flow business, buying a deck oven is not a huge investment.”

A new deck oven can cost as little as $5,000, while a new conveyor oven will probably cost at least three times that. ‘That’s really expensive,” says Kurt Krohn of Broadway Pizza and Subs in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in reference to the conveyor price tag. “That’s a very large risk for a startup cost.” When he was opening his restaurant, Krohn shopped around and found a used Bakers Pride for $600. Four years later, he’s extremely happy with his decision. “I cook my pizzas in it I cook my chicken Parmesan, my marinated chicken, and even hamburgers on a cooking tray.”

The Quality Choice

In the restaurant business, when you go with a less expensive solution, you usually suffer a quality trade-off, as in lower quality. Not true with the deck oven. In fact, most people agree that, for quality alone, deck ovens outperform conveyor ovens.

“Our primary customer tends to be somebody doing a gourmet pizza,” says Steve Burchik of the Montague Compa­ny in Hayward, California. “The larger chains tend to use conveyor ovens be­cause they’re interested in speed and ef­ficiency. The gourmet pizza operation tends to look for a unit where it can bake each pizza individually. If they’ve got a thicker crust or a thicker mix of ingredi­ents, it can bake a little longer [in a deck oven]. There’s also a belief that you get a better crust on a deck than bouncing along on a chain.

Inside most pizza deck ovens is a large handcrafted “stone” that absorbs heat. It takes an hour and a half to heat the oven, but once these “bricks” are hot, they retain their heat longer than a bare steel deck. The stones absorb moisture from the raw dough and cre­ate a crust quality that can’t be duplicat­ed in any other fashion. While conveyor ovens provide a consistent bake, they of­ten lose the personalized character that a well-managed deck oven gives a pizza. They can also be less effective for pies with multiple toppings.

“Many people like the performance and the look of cooking on a deck,” says Jerry Perkins, vice president of Hatch Jennings, Inc., a manufacturer’s repre­sentative for Blodgett Oven Company. “They feel it gives more of a pizza-shop type of look to the store.”

When Nick Angelis opened Nick’s Pizza in Queens, New York, last year, he made a deliberate decision to avoid con­veyors and go with an II Forno Classico deck oven from Bakers Pride. Designed to closely replicate the bake of a classic brick oven, the Il Forno can reach tem­peratures of 700 F to 750 F (typical deck ovens peak at 650).

“Our pies cook in something like three to five minutes, depending on how hot the oven is and how much of a load it’s under,” Angelis says. “It comes really close to the finish on the pie that you’d get from a coal-burning oven. It also has the benefit of being a little better for the environment than burning coal.

“If it’s run right,” Angelis continues, “when you throw the pizza in the oven, it makes a marbleized effect. The parts that touch the deck will blacken, and the parts that raise a little above it will be brown. When the dough is right and the oven is right, you get a really nice finish on the pie.

Nick’s Pizza was recently rated the second-best pizza in New York by The New York Times.

“People are defending the quality of the deck oven,” David Condon says. ‘They’re looking for old things coming back again — the peasant food, the sim­ple ingredients, the fresh tomatoes, whatever you want to put on it  those combinations of food. I don’t think you really can get that [quality] in a convey­or. People want fresh and well-executed food. The deck oven offers that.”

Production Issues

If deck ovens are so wonderful, then why does every new Pizza Hut and Little Caesar’s start with a conveyor? The an­swer is simple. Deck ovens need to be watched. With a conveyor oven, once the speed and temperature are set all you have to do is drop the pie in on one side and wait until it comes out baked on the other.

Deck ovens, on the other hand, re­quire constant attention. Every time the door is opened on the deck, heat is lost. Also, when you cook a pie, it cools that spot of the deck down slightly. And some ovens have hot and cold spots. Combine those three factors, and you’ll realize that cooking a consistent pizza on a deck takes skill and training.

“If you’re doing any volume, you’re constantly opening the ovens to shift pizza around,” says Paul Miller of John’s Restaurant & Pizzeria in Or­chard Park, New York. Miller recently switched from decks to conveyors. “You lose all the heat, you don’t get a steady cook, and it’s erratic. With the new technology, it’s more consistent. There’s also less handling of the pizzas, so you don’t drop them.”

In addition to keeping quality consis­tent, using a conveyor can lower em­ployee cost because you won’t need to hire highly trained bakers.

Still, a series of well-managed deck ovens can make up for the inefficiency of a single deck. Decks can be stacked two or three high. During busy times, by inserting pizzas in the ovens in rota­tion, bakers can avoid hot-spot problems and the necessity of having to ro­tate pizzas so frequently. At Regina Pizzeria, a popular Boston chain, the Fanuel Hall location has eight decks, which can both whip out production and maintain the quality.

“We rotate the ovens we’re putting them into,” explains manager Joe Porter. “By the time we’re finished [with a series], everything’s cooked and the heat’s back up to the temperature.”

Paul Mirogiannis of Nick’s Pizza in Wellesley, Massachusetts (no relation to the New York Nick’s), agrees. “I think these ovens are better than the conveyor belts. We can check them dur­ing the cooking process. We like to have the pizza golden brown.”

A Good Investment

The bottom line on deck ovens is that they are reliable, give a high-quality bake and won’t bankrupt you while you’re trying to earn a living. Buying a conveyor could leave you cash-poor. In a slow spell, that’s money you may need to keep your doors open. With a deck oven, you can always begin with a single deck; if the traffic increases, buy anoth­er one and stack it on top. Or if you de­cide that you do want to switch (or up­grade to a more expensive deck like the Il Forno), then you should be able to re­sell your oven at a good price.

“One thing about deck ovens, they hold their value,” says Jerry Perkins. “Probably one of the best investments in a restaurant is one of these pizza ovens.”

Swabbing the Deck

Deck ovens are built like tanks. They can last for decades with a minimal amount of maintenance and care. Here are a few tips:

- Clean out spills with a wire brush and scraper constantly throughout the day. This prevents the burnt matter from ending up as unsightly black specks on the crusts of fin­ished pizzas.

 - Turn the stones every six to 12 months. This is harder than it sounds.

- While burnt toppings and leaks will self clean eventually by burn­ing off, it is best to rinse out the ovens at the end of each day. Use a solution of 2 cups of distilled white vinegar in 2 gallons of warm water. Swab down the deck of the oven to clean it of grit. The solution will steam off and not cause the stone to crack.

Evelyne Slomon