7 Tips to Clean a Pizza Oven Easily

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 Whether you use convection ovens, brick ovens, conveyor ovens, or deck ovens, the most crucial aspect of an effective pizza oven is cleanliness. Most people avoid cleaning their pizza ovens because they can be daunting. However, cleaning is essential for a functional oven that produces good-tasting pizza.

How often you do your cleaning will determine the time each session takes. If you do it regularly and as part of your routine job, you won’t have to spend hours per cleaning session. The following tips can help you do your cleaning without stress. 

1. Wait for the Oven to Cool

Don’t rush to clean the oven immediately after cooking your pizza. Give it time to cool. Cleaning a hot oven can cause injury or even damage.

Ovens with pizza stones are complicated to clean when hot; any attempt to force a clean-up may cause the rocks to crack. The damage may be costly to repair. Another disadvantage of cleaning a hot oven is that some stone fragments may end up in your pizza. This is the last thing you want to happen to your pizza. 

2. Clean Oftentimes

Even if you have the best pizza oven, you cannot afford to allow a build-up of dirt. When this happens, it causes many other problems, including a strange taste in your food. Reports have shown that dirty pizza ovens are at a high risk of causing fires. This endangers everyone working around or operating the stove. The best way through this is to get into a routine where you constantly clean your oven. 

3. Use the Right Tools

This cannot be emphasized enough. Some people use cloth or sponge to wipe off the dirt out of convenience and time constraints. This is not right and will affect the effectiveness of the oven. During the cooking process, some pieces of food get churred and stuck in the oven. A scraper and a brush are the proper way to get this out.

If the dirt is thick, a heavy-duty brush is ideal. Cleaning isn’t always easy, and you must be strong when scrubbing to achieve a quality finish. 

4. Clean Up Any Spilled Toppings

Part of the dirt in an oven is a build-up of old food. Getting rid of this first makes the remaining task lighter. Once the pizza is cooked, use appropriate tools to pull out the spilt toppings. If you don’t do this, they will overcook, burn, and get stuck inside the oven.

A simple trick to contain the spilt toppings is to use a baking sheet or a foil under the heating element. The shiny side of the foil should face downwards. This will help you catch any toppings that would have fallen on the oven. 

5. Fire Up the Oven

However contradictory and drastic this may seem, it is one of the best recommendations for cleaning your oven. Starting a 370-degree Celsius fire can effectively clean the inside walls of your oven. It burns away accumulated soot, making cleaning much more manageable.

6. Clean the Other Parts of the Oven as Well

The oven is a mechanism with various parts linked together. When cleaning, you can easily forget about the other parts of the stove and concentrate only on the cleaning area. However, parts such as the air intakes and bearings also require attention. They can become clogged with grease, affecting your pizza oven's overall performance. 

7. Follow the Manufacturer’s Recommendations

The manufacturer is best positioned to help you maintain your oven. They do this by providing recommendations in the form of brochures and booklets. Instead of taking maintenance into your own hands, follow the advice of the oven manufacturer. They may recommend specific cleaning methods or products.

An outdoor pizza oven can serve you for up to 25 years, but if you don’t clean the oven regularly, this lifespan is reduced.