Designer wood-fired oven: how to recognise uniqueness and innovation.

The wood-fired oven is an extraordinary cooking tool that bakes food like no other and furnishes your home wonderfully well thanks to its rustic and genuine style. Its superior cooking performances stem from the thermal characteristics which are basically determined by two factors:

  • the use of refractory materials with high thermal efficiency.
  • the shape of the dome that facilitates the circulation of hot air inside the oven.


In wood-burning ovens, the design has not only an aesthetic value, but it is of the utmost importance when it comes to providing them with their heat capacity and, consequently, their cooking performances.

In this article, we will focus on the design, particularly the dome’s, the features and advantages of Alfa steel ovens, the high technological content of our state-of-the-art wood-burning ovens, setting forth our philosophy that nurtures innovation without forgetting the history and the culture of cooking with wood.




The importance of design in wood-fired ovens.

The traditional pizza oven has very ancient origins, born well before design was introduced as a school subject. Its shape and the materials with which it is built, are the result of centuries of experience and savoir-faire handed down from generation to generation. It was made of bricks, not necessarily beautiful, but it sure cooked well and lasted a long time. Their main features were that it was built with refractory materials that accumulate a lot of heat and release it gradually and, most of all, the particular shape of the dome, a slightly flattened half-sphere that distributes heat evenly throughout the cooking chamber.

The heat of wood-burning oven comes from the fire and moves like that

  1. directly from the flames heating the air that rises up the walls of the oven to the top of the vault and then is pushed back downwards to bake the upper part of the food.
  2. directly from the embers heating the floor that bakes the lower part of the food and enables the oven to reach high and stable temperatures.


The traditional pizza oven cooks through the three ways of heat transfer:

  • by conduction: the heat is transferred between the food and the floor through direct contact.
  • by convection: the heat is transferred through the hot air.
  • by radiation: the heat is transferred without any contact between the food and the fire.


The design of the wood-burning oven allows you to enhance and better direct the heat of the fire by optimising its thermal output and significantly improving your cooking.



Alfa’s designer wood-burning ovens.

Let’s now come to the point and talk about how design is a key factor in Alfa’s wood-fired ovens. Let’s begin with the technological innovations contained in steel ovens and continue exploring the consequences of these breakthroughs on cooking results.


The technologies of Alfa’s steel ovens.

Innovation and technological research form the basis for developing our pizza ovens. In fact, Alfa’s domestic ovens are professional home ovens that combine superb performances, high energy efficiency and stylish design to furnish your living spaces.

In particular, the technological innovations that have a major impact on design and performances are:


Let’s now look more closely at these two innovations.

1. The Forninox™ patent.

This innovation is the result of an intuition dating back about 10 years ago which consists in coating the wood-fired refractory oven with a stainless-steel dome. The Forninox™ patent allows to increase the oven’s heat efficiency by reducing fuel consumption and improving your cooking thanks to the thermal properties of steel. Alfa’s ovens made with this technology reach a temperature of 450 °C (840 °F) in a few minutes, have a low weight and 4 casters that make them easier to move. This solution was extended to the commercial sector on the back of the great success achieved in the home oven business.


2. The Flue system™ patent

The second technology patented by Alfa that significantly improves the oven’s thermal efficiency is the Flue system™. This innovation consists in using a deflector that slows down the exit of the fumes coming from the combustion chamber so that they can release all the heat before heading towards the flue. In other words, the heat given off by firewood is fully exploited and results in an increase in thermal performance with lower fuel consumption.



The performances of Alfa steel ovens.

The use of the two above-mentioned technologies has allowed us to develop high-grade stainless-steel pizza ovens that are second to none in the business with superior performances in terms of excellent cooking with low energy consumption.

Let’s have a closer look at these two aspects.

  1. Excellent cooking
  2. Low energy consumption.


1. Excellent cooking

The Alfa steel ovens are the go-to appliances not only for baking pizza but also for cooking bread, casseroles, roasts and whatever you wish. These ovens’ design and the materials used to build them guarantee superior cooking results as their great thermal efficiency allows them to reach and maintain very high temperatures for a long time.




2. Low energy consumption.

Our ovens have high energy efficiency, that is they need less fuel and less time to reach the desired temperature.

To learn more, read what are the 5 reasons to buy an Alfa home oven.


The role of design in Alfa steel ovens.

In our wood-fired ovens, the design is key. In particular, by combining the form and the materials to manufacture our products, we managed to make a significant impact on:

  • Functionality
  • Aesthetics



The functionality

Design is absolutely key to determining the high thermal efficiency and the superior cooking performance of Alfa’s wood-fired ovens. The use of stainless-steel allows for greater insulation, the shape of the dome gives a hotter oven with fewer cold spots and the slightly rectangular base facilitates the handling of food to make the most of your oven space.



The aesthetics

From an aesthetic point of view, Alfa manufactures pizza ovens with stylish and elegant design, both in the larger models and in the smaller ones such as the stainless-steel One that weighs as little as 50 kg. The shape of the dome brings to mind classic brick ovens, while the use of stainless-steel gives them a modern feel in accordance with our philosophy of combining innovation and tradition.

Alfa ovens are high-performing tools that will make any amateur cook bake like a seasoned chef and are also superb pieces of furniture to decorate your indoor or outdoor spaces. Have a look at the 10 reasons to buy an outdoor wood-burning oven for the home use.


Alfa between tradition and innovation.

Innovation through tradition is a strategic imperative in Alfa’s way of manufacturing ovens. For more than forty years, we have been working to improve the performance of our products. We started out by developing the efficiency of refractory materials, then we revolutionised the oven business by introducing stainless-steel as a raw material for producing pizza ovens. So, we have obtained products with outstanding thermal performance, high energy efficiency, great robustness and extreme manoeuvrability for the mobile items as a result of unrelenting research and development that involved all the production aspects and, particularly, the study of materials and forms. Design is a distinctive feature of Alfa’s ovens that does embody a function and improve their usability.