How to Clean Your Pizza Oven
Almost everything in life needs cleaning. Your car, your carpet, yourself and your pizza oven! Cleaning a pizza oven is a little more complex than cleaning a regular oven. There are ashes and creosote to remove, a chimney to clean and a few other elements that make it a bit tricky. But once you’ve got your routine down pat, it’ll be easy as pie and it won’t take long at all. Let’s go through the basics of how to clean your pizza oven.
DON’T clean when hot
Whatever you do, don’t try to clean the pizza oven straight after you’ve used it. It’s best to leave the pizza oven to cool down overnight before cleaning it. Cleaning a hot pizza oven can not only be dangerous for you, the cleaner but also detrimental to the pizza oven itself.
1) Clean the inside of it
Cleaning the interior is one of the most important parts of the process. You’ll find dirt, ashes, grease and food residue inside your pizza oven which can affect the taste of your food – and nobody wants that!
- Remove the ashes each time you go to use your pizza oven. Use a shovel or a copper brush to scrape them out and dispose of them safely.
- Clean grease stains using a sponge and a mixture of water and vinegar to cut through the grease. Don’t use detergents or cleaning products on your pizza oven because the pizza stone can absorb the chemicals, tainting your food. Don’t use too much water either as this can cause cracking in the stone.
- Remove creosote from the inside of the oven. Creosote presents a fire hazard when it builds up in your pizza oven without cleaning it.
2) Clean the exterior
The exterior of your pizza oven tends to get dirty over time. The way you clean your exterior will depend on whether your pizza oven is brick or stainless steel. To get expert advice on how to clean the exterior of your oven, contact a pizza oven specialist like Alfa Ovens.
3) Clean the chimney
Like all chimneys, pizza oven chimneys present a fire hazard if soot isn’t cleaned out regularly. Simply use a brush to clean out the soot in your pizza oven. Inspect your soot levels regularly and clean when they reach 1/8 of an inch.
See? Cleaning your pizza oven isn’t such a difficult task after all. Follow these simple steps on how to clean your pizza oven and you’ll never have any dramas! Need some extra info on pizza ovens and how to clean them? Get in touch with the team at Alfa Ovens. They’re Australia’s importers of the world’s finest pizza ovens, both domestic and commercial. Call Alfa Ovens to start your pizza oven journey today!