How we cut pizza bake times from 5 minutes to 90 seconds
Most ovens rely on air to move heat around. But here’s the thing: air is actually pretty bad at its job. It’s slow. We decided to stop relying on the air and started using 500W infrared (IR) emitters inside our steam ovens. Instead of waiting for the air to get hot, IR waves shoot straight into the dough and toppings. It’s a direct hit. The speed is wild. With 500W emitters, you get a massive burst of energy right where it matters. You get that perfect, bubbly brown cheese and a crisp crust—the stuff that makes a pizza actually taste like a pizza—without drying out the inside. Standard heating elements take forever to warm up. These hit peak temperature almost instantly. That’s why we can drop the bake cycle from 300 seconds down to just 90. It’s fast. Really fast. And that changes everything for your workflow. Of course, putting electronics in a steam-filled box is a bit of a nightmare. Moisture ruins everything. To fix that, we use quartz envelopes. They’re tough enough to handle the humidity and the constant temperature swings without cracking. Just a heads-up: make sure your wiring and sockets can handle the amperage. If you skimp on the hardware, you’re just going to burn out your terminals. Now, cutting your bake time by 70% is a huge win for throughput, but it comes with a catch. When you’re working with this much intensity, the gap between “perfectly browned” and “burnt to a crisp” is tiny. You have to be spot on with your timers and sensor placement. If your conveyor belt is even a little bit out of sync with the IR output, you’ll be serving charcoal. It takes a bit more precision to manage than a lazy convection oven, but the results are worth the effort.