How to Clean Pizza Oven – Clean Your Pizza Oven at Home
You waited for the pizza for the last 2 two hours. Yeah! It’s being served. But you felt a sort of bitterness in the flavor. Don’t see your partner with suspicious eyes; she has done everything right for you in the recipe.
So what’s the matter?
The main culprit for the most obvious reasons could be your pizza oven, which needs your attention. With oodles of ashes and food, wood, and oil residual left in the oven, you ultimately find an imbalance in pizza taste every time you cook. Your oven needs a deep cleaning.
So, how to clean pizza oven efficiently will be our topic of discussion today.
Let’s dig in deep;
How to Clean Pizza Oven – Importance of Cleaning Pizza Oven:
Before going into the oceanic details of pizza oven cleaning, your mind might boggle, why is it so necessary to clean pizza oven, as ultimately it’s just an oven?
The scariest thing here is; you are playing with fire, my dear!
And the fire can react with the residual build ups or leftovers in the pizza oven at any time, creating a hell-hazardous scenario. Whether you are using an outdoor wood fired pizza oven or a stainless steel propane portable outdoor pizza oven, in both cases, you are going to burn particular fossil fuels or natural fuels.
Both fire sources leave residue after burning (you can’t control it), and cold temperatures condense this debris with the addition of moisture in it.
This can be unexpectedly dangerous anytime, and the complicated thing is, these types of debris buildups are not very visible to detect. So, inspections are always advised to keep your pizza oven clean after every or some number of usage.
But the good news is the buildups that mainly consist of Soot and creosote potentially dissolve when you preheat the pizza oven. But these buildups don’t disband entirely, leaving some amount which later on mixes with the moisture and unhurriedly makes heaps of stuffing.
If not regularly, you should inspect your pizza oven quarterly or at least 2 times a year and perpetrate a GRAND cleanup operation.
Cleaning the Inside of Pizza Oven – ASH and Grease Removal:
In both cases of stainless steel or woodfire oven, whenever you discern your pizza has some dusty grains at the base or over the pizza stuffing, probably that is Ash or burnt pizza stone that is creating a mess.
In the case of portable ovens like OONI or Bertolli pizza ovens, you need to clean the pizza stone (place link here), which is a kind of base for your pizza dough to rest at.
- For a woodfire oven, the principal interior mess is the ASH or the grease elements that develop after the oil remnants.
- This is the most leisurely step, and you can scratch this stuffing with a very common brass or copper wire brush.
- If the debris is hard stuck, you can use a scraper tool to peel these off.
- However, your kiln base is sensitive, and you should use the tool gently, so it shouldn’t ruin the coating of the oven base.
- Apart from this, you should clean pizza oven’s roof with the same brush and damp cloth.
- In case of Grease buildup, you can use vinegar and baking soda solution.
- Avoid using any pizza oven cleaner as it may crack the surface.
Cleaning the Creosote – For Chimney Pizza Ovens
Creosote is toxic, creosote is flammable, creosote is hazardous! Mostly pizza ovens come with chimneys to exhaust emissions. This is the easiest and most inexpensive way of throwing emissions out of your pizza oven, but it can be perilous if one doesn’t do regular inspection and maintenance.
As creosote is an assortment of lethal gasses like carbon monoxide, and debris, hard ash, and moisture, it is highly flammable and can cause a break of fire in your chimneys which can result in any severe damage.
The good news is, Creosote develops slowly, but that doesn’t mean you should wait for any mishap. The evolution of this Tar like substance is due to multiple reasons like no maintenance, poor ventilation, etc.
To summarize how to clean a pizza oven from creosote, first, you should identify the type of creosote you are dealing with.
The Type or Stage 1: It’s an initial stage, and you’ll only find this substance in the form of soot-like material. It can be dry or oily in nature. For dry substances, you can simply use the pizza oven cleaning brush, and it’ll be fixed. but;
In case of grease or oily stuff, avoid using any dishwasher; the baking soda with water or vinegar will work as a robust homemade creosote remover.
The Type or Stage 2: If you haven’t done any inspection or maintenance for the last 4-6 months, you’ll most probably see hard black flakes building up in the flue of your pizza oven chimney. Now, it’s stage 2, and removing these creosote flakes won’t be super easy.
Use a scraper or peel-off tools to remove this, liquid sprays, or you can hire pizza oven cleaning services if you are conscious about your flue and chimney health.
The Type or Stage 3: The most stubborn type! You will find the hardest, thick, and stiff form of tar. This materializes when you don’t make enough arrangements to counter creosote at stages 1 and 2.
And at this stage, you are at the utmost menace of fire eruption in your chimney. To counter this stage, you must use multiple creosote removing market products or hire a chimney sweep service.
Whatever stage you are in and whatever solution you use to tackle creosote, always sweep your pizza oven base. The pellets, debris, or particles that’ll drop from the chimney sweep can catch fire when you heat the oven after all this mess.
So, deep cleaning of the base afterward is highly urged.
Cleaning the Soot – The exterior of the Pizza Oven:
In comparison to creosote, soot is pretty easier to remove. Technically, as I mentioned above, the heat burns a significant quantity of soot when it reaches the highest temperatures. However, you should do the inspection after some fires.
Now again, there are majorly two types of pizza ovens we mostly see in our backyards; stainless steel outdoor pizza ovens and woodfire pizza ovens. You can use a pizza brush to scrape off the soot in both cases. Nonetheless, in a woodfire pizza oven scenario, you only avoid an absurd amount of water, oven cleaners, or detergents.
Again, a solution of baking soda can work like a catalyst to clean pizza oven.
How to Avoid Pizza Ovens Getting Stuffed with Debris?
Keeping your pizza ovens away from debris like tar and soot is not in your control. Forget about propane gas ovens; avoiding the residual buildups is almost unattainable if you use woodfire pizza ovens.
Yes, you can set some precautions or steps to reduce the speed of clogging debris in chimneys and flue lines.
- Don’t ever use wet woods – only use properly dried hardwood, as it will have a low rate of moisture, and that’ll eventually cause the lowest percentage of smoke and residue.
- Some people don’t open the doors of pizza ovens, so it burns the fuel fast. But as a result, poor ventilation rationale moisture and smoke pass through the chimneys slowly. This results in vents catching the most percentage of smoke and residue, resulting in a fast building up of creosote.
- Not maintaining the Pizza ovens? Clean your pizza oven after every use or at least after 2-3 fires.
These are the most favorable conditions for residue buildups. You can apply these steps to avoid your oven reaching stage 3 of creosote.
People Also Ask – FAQs:
Should you clean a pizza oven?
You should definitely clean a pizza oven after every use. Cleaning a pizza oven will save your hard-earned cash in the long run by raising the life of your pizza oven and avoiding the chimney sweep services to destroy creosote.
What happens if you wash a pizza stone with soap?
Using soap during the cleaning of your pizza is not the right idea. In the case of steel and outdoor woodfire ovens, if moisture settles in, your pizza oven can become rusty, or cracking of the surface coating happens. It can lead to a significant disaster.
How do you clean a pizza oven at home?
Cleaning your pizza oven at home is easy. There is no need for any specialized tools or dissembling of complex components. Most of the time, a brass or copper wire brush, scrapper tool, damp cloth, and a solution of vinegar and baking soda will do 95% of your job if you act timely.
The Bottom Line – Wrapping Up the Story:
So, how to clean pizza oven? Cleaning a pizza oven isn’t a pricey and tiring task until you don’t pay attention at the right times. Creosote is the worst form of debris that one has to battle with. Still, you can sidestep it reaching its worst stage by timely actions.
Else, you would have to fill the pockets of chimney sweep services. Also, you must brush up on your lousy pizza cooking habits to make your pizza oven last longer than expected.
