Do pizza ovens need a hood? Let’s talk about pizza ovens and if they actually need a oven hood or not.
Pizza ovens are quite heavy-duty pieces of machinery – especially when you think about the ones in restaurants. With heavy-duty machinery, you’re going to need heavy-duty exhausts.
That’s the point of a pizza oven hood. They’re designed to siphon the greasy fumes out of the pizza oven as it’s operating while also keeping the heat consistent to make for a more reliable cook.
But do pizza ovens need a hood? If you were to think about it, what separates the pizza ovens that do require hoods from the ones that don’t? Are there even any pizza ovens out there that don’t require a hood?
Yet again, I’ve been sitting asking myself these questions and I think I’ve found the answers that I was looking for. Hopefully, they’ll be of use to you too!
Do Pizza Ovens Need A Hood?
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a traditional pizza oven indoors that doesn’t have a hood installed. In fact, there’s plenty of rules and regulations in place for keeping a hood over an indoor pizza oven, and with good reason.
You don’t want to let your pizza ovens cook at full force without some kind of guarantee that the byproduct is being sucked out of there (remember pizzas cook at around 800-900F which is an insane amount of heat for a building).
You won’t be able to run a restaurant that cooks pizzas without a hood. It’s that simple. But what if we’re not talking about a restaurant pizza oven?
What if you’ve installed one at your own home and are wondering about whether you need to make that extra hood investment for security. The short answer is yes, you should always ensure that your pizza oven has a hood. It’s for your own safety above anything else.
What Does A Hood Do?
The oven hood basically works as an exhaust pipe for all of the fuel that is being burned while the pizza is cooking. Remember, all pizza ovens require some kind of fuel to get going and it’s usually either wood, gas, or coal.
These will all burn and leave a trail of fumes that need to be dealt with. That’s what the oven hoods are used for and it’s why they’re so mandatory for indoor pizza ovens.
They’re also a really good way of regulating the temperature outside of the oven. While the oven gets incredibly hot, the oven hood is a great way of keeping the temperature of the room down.
Imagine cooking a pizza at 900F in a room without a hood. Eventually, that room is going to want to try and equalize. It won’t actually reach 900F, or even come close, but it’ll get very stuffy and very warm in there, making it uncomfortable for anyone waiting around for their pizza to cook.
It’s also a good point to mention that odors are neutralized well with an oven hood. Every pizza is different. While each one requires a similar level of dough, which will usually always be made in the same way, the toppings will vary from meat to fish to veg to cheese.
Once these things start to combine over the course of a few hours, you’ll notice some interesting smells that you’d rather avoid. That’s what the oven hood works to stop from happening.
Do Outdoor Pizza Ovens Need Hoods?
My go-to now for outdoor pizza, is definitely a pizza oven. Specifically, I want to take a look at the Ooni pizza oven and see whether or not it needs a hood.
For starters, you’re being faced with a completely different setting. You’re no longer cooped up indoors, trying to regulate temperatures and trying to stop odors from taking over your otherwise sweet-smelling home or restaurant.
An Ooni pizza oven cooks outdoors to impressive degrees. It will still reach the temperatures of the more traditional pizza ovens indoors, but does that really matter if you’re out in your yard.
Well, no, not really. See, they come with a built-in chimney that works as a siphon and sends most of the cooking fumes and moisture upwards and outwards. Once it’s out of the chimney, the wind naturally does a good job of doing the rest.
Any of the issues you face with an indoor pizza oven simply don’t need to exist with an Ooni pizza oven. The temperature doesn’t need to stay regulated because you’re outside.
There’s no way that your Ooni will get hot enough to start making the entire outside air unbearable to stand in. There’s way too much room for the heat to spread out in. That’s a win for the Ooni.
Then there’s the odor. Yes, the odor isn’t collected by a hood but that’s because it really doesn’t need to be. The smell will be sent straight up out of the chimney, and again, the wind will be more than happy to do the rest for you.
It’ll carry the smells away in all different directions, meaning that it won’t be too overwhelming in any one place. If anything, your neighbors will just get mighty jealous of the amazing pizza smells they’re starting to notice drift into their yards.
Summary
It would appear that most traditional pizza ovens do in fact need a hood. Especially if you’re planning to cook and sell your pizzas commercially.
It’s just an extra investment that you’re going to have to consider if you’re going to opt for an oven of this magnitude.
It goes a long way at preventing a lot of the problems I mentioned, like temperature regulation and odor control, but is it really worth getting at all if you can just opt for the Ooni straight away?
As I said, the Ooni pizza oven doesn’t need an oven hood to work wonders. On top of that, it makes great pizza anyway – probably just as good (if not better!) than most of the traditional ovens can do!
I really cannot sing the praises of the Ooni enough, and if you haven’t got one yourself yet, what are you doing? You’ll thank me once you finally take that plunge and see for yourself how good they can be.
