Pizzeria style pizza at home (Pizza At Home Pizza Maker)

Member Name: azana

Product:	Pizza At Home Pizza Maker
Date:	05/01/09 (282 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes probably the most delicious pizza you will ever eat

Disadvantages: A little pricey

This pizza maker makes wonderful pizza, as good as any that you would eat at a restaurant if you get it right.

We all love food in my family, so when we sampled the pizza that a friend's husband had made with one of these we were hooked. I had to have one!

The pizza cooker is a table top cooker with a proper pizza stone and heating elements above and below the stone. It looks a bit like a clam shell, it opens up to reveal the cooking surface inside.

If you have cooked with stoneware before you will know that it needs prooving and shouldn't be washed - if you haven't you just need to know that it gets very hot and makes a crisp pizza base.

You make your pizza and put it onto the two paddles provided and bung it on to the preheated stone. About five minutes later your delicous pizza will be ready to eat, and can be cut up with the razor sharp cutter that comes with the set, there is also a deep pan dish provided if you prefer that to thin crust pizza, although the deep pan takes slightly longer to cook.

The pizza cooks very very quickly and the unit does get very hot and should be approached with caution and opened with oven gloves ideally. It is a vented unit so does generate some smoke - but also delicious cooking smells.

It is relatively easy to use - you can make your own dough and top with passata, cheese and your topping of choice or you could warm up ready made or frozen pizzas, and use it for omelettes and even bacon and eggs though I have yet to do this.

So why bother with one of these and not just use a conventional oven?

Well if you have made home made pizza before you will know that it needs up to half an hour in a conventional oven. Even on a stone you just can't cook it quickly enough or at a greater enough temperature to avoid a soggy base or to get that authentic taste. This pizza maker gets past this problem, like I have said it really does take the 5 minutes the manufacturer claims.

Value wise - well for £50 or just under it is quite pricey for what it is, there really is not much to it. However when you consider that a good pizza in a restaurant can be £8 or so if you have a family or like pizza a lot it suddenly seems better value for money.

I have used this probably every 2 weeks since I have owned it, so it isn't one of those novelty kitchen gadgets for us.

By experimenting I have found that I get the best results using the Jamie Oliver pizza dough recipe rather than the one in the booklet that came with it, I use a breadmaker for convenience. For topping I just use passata or Heinz seived tomatoes with garlic and onion, and I am still experimenting with toppings - so far the chicken and rosemary pizza has been the biggest hit but the kids also like ham and mushroom. I have to admit to using pregrated mozzarella and cheddar mix also to save time. The paddles must be well floured so the pizza doesn't stick and I roll out the pizza with a rolling pin.

In summary we are really impressed with this product - I have given it four stars and not five only for the reason that it should be a little cheaper and could also be constructed so that the top didn't get so hot. Also at 36cm in diameter consider storage carefully!

If you love pizza then you probably will like this pizza maker.

Summary: Cook your own pizza at home with this relatively easy to use (harder to store) gadget