Pizza Oven
Reviews
It’s easy to become obsessed with authentic wood-fired pizza. And thanks to all the advancements in technology, we can enjoy Italian-style pizza right in our backyards.
The oven up for discussion today is the Chicago Brick Oven CBO-500. Continuously influenced by European design, Chicago Brick Oven manufactures its ovens right here in the U.S. They believe the three ingredients for a fantastic pizza oven are:
Undoubtedly, CBO takes pride in offering American-made ovens, but how do they compare to their Italian competitors? We’ll spill all the details in this CBO-500 Countertop Pizza Oven review.
We found the CBO-500 easy to use, making it suitable for beginners and expert chefs alike. It’s a beautiful appliance that cooks just as well as it looks. We were impressed not only by how easy it was to fire up but by how quickly and thoroughly it cooked our meals. Heat up time was about 25 minutes, and our pizza was ready to serve in 90 seconds.
Let us also mention that this oven can be used outdoors and indoors. It’s rare when you can find a powerful indoor oven like this one that produces temperatures up to 1000 degrees. If you decide to use it indoors, we highly recommend getting it installed by a professional.
The CBO-500 doesn’t fall short when it comes to available colors to match your outdoor kitchen; you can get it in copper, silver, or black. Color is the least of our concerns when reviewing an oven, though. We were mainly focused on fuel type, cooking speeds, and insulation properties.
We had this oven up and running in 25 minutes through the use of small logs. Once pre-heated, it cooked our pizza in as little as 90 seconds. The flavors gave us nothing to complain about. Toppings were piping hot, cheese was effortlessly melted, and the crust was charred to perfection.
However, the biggest thing that caught our attention is that this oven is NSF-rated and UL listed. This means it’s safe for both indoor and outdoor use. It produces little smoke, so we can see how it could work indoors. We haven’t tried using it inside, but as long as you have good ventilation and get it professionally installed, you should be fine.
Finally, what about the insulation? Any quality pizza oven should do an amazing job retaining hot temperatures. After all, it’s this heat that allows our meals to cook so quickly and perfectly. We found the CBO-500 Countertop Pizza Oven to have wonderful heat holding capabilities. We didn’t expect any less from refractory cement, but sometimes when an oven is poorly put together, there are cracks where heat seeps through. This wasn’t the case at all with this CBO oven.
If you’re looking for a wood-fired pizza oven that can be used indoors or outdoors, the Chicago Brick Oven CBO-500 is for you. It’s one of our highest-rated CBO pizza ovens because of its fast cooking times, amazing insulation, and CBO’s FlameRoll feature which thoroughly disperses heat throughout the dome.
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