delicious reviews: Revolve Pizza Oven

Star rating: ★★★★

Best for: Budding pizzaiolos who want to sharpen their skills

The Revolve Pizza Oven is available from Revolve (£549 RRP)

What’s good about it?

With a USP that features in the name of the oven, you’d hope it would make a difference – and it certainly does. Launching the pizza onto the 12-inch stone, flicking the switch on the magnetic, AA-battery powered motor below and then watching your creation slowly revolve and puff up is a joy. It means the pizza gets evenly cooked with a charred crust all the way around with absolutely no need for you to try and turn it in the oven yourself and accidentally spill the toppings or launch it into the flames. You’re free to start making the next pizza or just sit back and be hypnotised by the gently spinning food.

The rotating stone also means the oven itself can be nice and compact. Without the need for the flames to go around the sides of the oven as well as the back, it takes up less space than a lot of the other ovens out there. It’s also designed to be portable – the legs fold in on themselves and there’s a rain cover that doubles as a carry bag, so you can take it camping or to the beach with ease.

The oven comes with an infrared thermometer so you can check your stone is up to temperature from a distance; a pizza peel (the shovel-like tool of moving the pizza) and the rain cover/carry case – so there’s no need to add extra accessories on top of the base package (although you can buy a special cleaning brush and cast-iron griddle if you so wish).

The Revolve Pizza Oven is also the first rotating pizza oven to be certified by the True Neapolitan Pizza Association (AVPN). What this means, we’re not quite sure, but knowing how particular the Italians can be about their traditional foods, it’s an extra stamp of confidence and authority that the oven itself is capable of making authentic Neapolitan pizza.

What’s not so good?

The included infrared thermometer seemed a little inaccurate at times, but it’s not really needed anyway – after 20 minutes on full power, the oven is good to go (and appears to keep the heat up between pizzas too, provided you give it a minute or two before launching the next one). The revolving mechanism isn’t completely smooth either – it will sometimes stop for a second before continuing. Again, this isn’t a major issue, but if you have a particularly blackened bit of crust and it just so happens to pause when it’s right in front of the flames, it can lead to excessive burnt bits.

It should also be noted that while the pizza oven is very portable, you still need a gas tank to fuel it. There are smaller portable tanks available, but if yours is a big 70-litre canister, that negates the portability somewhat.

Our favourite feature

Naturally, it’s the rotating stone. Being able to sling your ’za into the oven, flick a switch and then get stretching the next one is actually a major gamechanger. It’s also brilliant if you’re cooking meat or veg in there on a cast-iron griddle – normally you’d have to get in there with some very fire-proof oven gloves and continuously turn the pan.

Overall verdict

It’s a bit pricier than some of the entry-level pizza ovens out there, but the main feature of the Revolve is more than a gimmick – it makes cooking pizza (and lots of other things) as hands-off as possible. That, combined with its small size, portability and sheer ease of use, makes it one of the most user friendly pizza ovens we’ve come across. It seriously shortens the learning curve required to make top-quality pizza at home, yet doesn’t have any limitations for the more advanced pizzaiolo.

Now browse our pizza recipes – including sourdough pizza, basic pizza dough and dozens of topping combinations.