The Companion Group kindly provided the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven for an honest review and giveaway.

Contents

Experience Authentic Homemade Pizza with the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven

There’s a special kind of joy that comes with creating a delicious, hot pizza right in your own home. For many, the dream of a backyard, wood-fired pizza oven remains an aspirational project, often involving complex brickwork and lengthy planning sessions (which, let’s be honest, can sometimes test the strongest of relationships!). While the grand outdoor build might still be on the horizon, the good news is you don’t have to wait to enjoy pizzeria-quality pies. Introducing the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven by Companion Group – renowned makers of Charcoal Companion products and even my personal favorite, the Pit Mitt oven glove.

This innovative indoor pizza oven brings the beloved pizza night experience into your kitchen, transforming your gas stovetop into a high-performance pizza-making station. Say goodbye to the unpredictable results of a standard home oven and embrace the convenience and speed of a dedicated appliance designed specifically for crafting perfect pizzas.

Originally, the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven was exclusively launched at Williams Sonoma, offering home chefs early access to this exciting new way to make pizza. Its compact design and powerful performance quickly made it a highly sought-after kitchen gadget for pizza enthusiasts.

Unleashing the Power of the Stovetop Pizza Oven

One of the most impressive features of the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven is its ability to reach temperatures up to 600ºF in approximately 15 minutes. This intense heat is crucial for achieving that authentic, crispy crust and perfectly cooked toppings typically found in professional pizzerias. Once preheated, your homemade pizza can be ready to enjoy in as little as 6 minutes, making it ideal for quick weeknight meals or entertaining guests.

The secret behind its exceptional performance lies in its carefully engineered design. The oven features dual cordierite baking stones, which are renowned for their heat retention and distribution properties. These stones efficiently absorb direct heat from your gas burner, ensuring an even cooking surface and eliminating troublesome hot spots that can lead to unevenly baked pizzas. Complementing this, a clever reflective heat shield is integrated into the oven’s top. This shield works to redirect heat downwards, ensuring that your toppings cook at the same pace as your crust, preventing raw toppings or burnt crusts. Additionally, a strategically placed moisture vent at the top allows excess moisture to escape, guaranteeing a crisper crust and preventing your delicious pizza from ever becoming soggy.

Operating the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven is remarkably straightforward. A convenient handle allows you to easily rotate the side opening to the right, creating an access point for inserting your pizza. Once your culinary creation is inside, simply rotate the handle back to close the opening, transforming the unit into an enclosed, high-heat baking environment. This intuitive design ensures minimal heat loss and maximum cooking efficiency.

In our household, the Pizzeria Pronto has become the star of impromptu DIY pizza parties. We’ve experimented with various doughs, from specialized ’00’ flour purchased at a local Italian market to readily available all-purpose flour, both yielding excellent results. The entire process becomes a fun family affair. My son, Nathan, has even honed his dough-throwing skills, expertly twirling and tossing the dough into beautifully thin, round shapes. The kids particularly love the creative freedom of designing their own pizzas, transforming simple ingredients into edible masterpieces – salami eyes, prosciutto noses, and ham smiles are frequent favorites.

When it comes to the actual baking, my husband, Scott, takes the helm. Unlike me, who can easily get sidetracked while assembling garlic breads and pizzas, he possesses a meticulous attention to detail. Plus, his new Apple Watch conveniently buzzes to alert him when the cooking time is up, ensuring perfect timing every time. This collaborative effort makes pizza night not just a meal, but an engaging and enjoyable activity for everyone.

Why Choose the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven?

Our experience with the Pizzeria Pronto has highlighted several compelling reasons why it stands out as an excellent choice for homemade pizza lovers:

Indoor Comfort: The most immediate benefit is the ability to make pizza indoors. Especially during colder months, there’s no need to brave the elements to enjoy a hot, fresh pizza. All the fun and deliciousness happen in the warmth and comfort of your kitchen, fostering a cozy family atmosphere.
Effortless Operation & Storage: This oven is incredibly user-friendly. Simply place it on your gas stovetop, turn on the burner, and let it preheat. Cleaning is also a breeze, and its compact design means it can be easily stored back in its box and placed on a pantry shelf, minimizing clutter in your kitchen.
Frees Up Your Main Oven: Utilizing the stovetop for pizza means your conventional oven remains available for other culinary tasks. This is particularly advantageous when entertaining or preparing a multi-course meal, allowing you to bake other dishes simultaneously without compromising on your pizza.
Superior Even Cooking: Thanks to its small, enclosed space and specialized design (dual cordierite stones and reflective heat shield), the Pizzeria Pronto ensures exceptionally even cooking of the pizza’s top. This means perfectly melted cheese and thoroughly cooked toppings every time.
Integrated Thermometer: The built-in thermometer is a valuable feature, allowing you to monitor the internal temperature accurately. This helps ensure consistent preheating and optimal cooking conditions, leading to reliably great results.

Considerations and Tips for Optimal Performance

While the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven offers a fantastic experience, there are a few points to consider:

Price Point: At approximately $179, it represents a significant investment compared to some other kitchen gadgets. However, when weighed against the cost of frequent takeout pizza or the expense of a full outdoor pizza oven, it offers a compelling value proposition for dedicated pizza enthusiasts. It also makes for an impressive and practical gift for anyone passionate about cooking.
Stovetop Heat and Discoloration: The instructions caution against using excessively high heat on your stovetop to prevent potential discoloration of the stainless steel portion from intense heat. While this initially caused some apprehension (especially on a pristine stovetop!), we found that achieving the full 600ºF on a medium-high setting, even with an 18,000 BTU stove, was challenging, with temperatures typically peaking around 550ºF. However, even at 550ºF, the oven still performed admirably. Careful monitoring and starting with a medium-high flame will help prevent any issues.
Crust Crispness and Cook Time: We observed that our pizzas typically took 9-10 minutes to cook, slightly longer than the stated 6 minutes. While the bottom of the pizza achieved a beautiful, even light brown crust throughout, we sometimes desired an even crisper finish. The top of the pizza developed lovely “blisters,” indicating good heat, but achieving the intensely charred look of a true wood-fired oven might require further experimentation with preheating times or very specific stovetop settings. Despite this, the consistent and even heating of the crust was a significant improvement over conventional ovens.

Elevating Your Home Pizza Night

If you’re a devoted pizza lover consistently underwhelmed by your conventional oven’s pizza results, the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven is a game-changer. It transforms pizza night into an interactive and delicious family event. While we enjoy making our own dough from scratch, many grocery stores offer excellent ready-to-use pizza dough, making spontaneous pizza nights entirely feasible and incredibly convenient.

To keep the hot pizzas flowing for a hungry crowd, a smart strategy is to prepare your next pizza while one is baking. This way, you can have a fresh, piping hot pizza ready every 6-10 minutes. For a family of two adults and two children, this rhythm works perfectly. For larger gatherings, consider supplementing with other easy-to-serve appetizers or side dishes to ensure everyone has something to munch on while waiting for their personalized pie.

The performance of the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven is optimally experienced on larger stovetops with high BTU burners. A powerful heat source allows the oven to reach and maintain its target temperature more efficiently, ensuring quicker cooking and a more consistent crust from edge to edge. If your stovetop is smaller or has lower BTU output, the preheating time may be longer, and the heat source will be more concentrated in the middle of the oven. In such cases, the efficiency of the cordierite stone in radiating heat evenly becomes even more critical for browning the edges of your crust.

Regardless of your stovetop’s power, a key tip for success is to roll or toss your dough as thinly as possible. Thinner dough cooks more thoroughly and quickly in this oven. While it’s certainly possible to cook thicker crusts, you might consider pre-baking the crust for a few minutes before adding toppings to ensure it cooks through completely. This versatile approach allows for experimentation with various pizza styles.

The Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven continues to be a popular choice for home chefs, often found at specialty retailers like Williams Sonoma. Its availability and pricing may vary, but its value as a dedicated indoor pizza solution remains consistent.

Win Your Own Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven!

Want to start making delicious homemade pizzas right on your stovetop? We’re giving away one Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven to a lucky reader!