How to get your pizzas out the door faster
Most convection ovens are just heating up air and hoping that air heats the food. It’s a slow process. We decided to stop messing around with the air and go straight for the pizza. By using frosted quartz infrared heaters, we hit the toppings and the crust directly. It’s a simple shift in how the heat moves, but the result is huge. You can take a bake cycle that usually takes five minutes and knock it down to 90 seconds. Why the “frosted” part matters If you use a standard clear quartz lamp, you get a concentrated beam of heat. In a pizza oven, that’s a nightmare. You end up with burnt cheese in one spot and raw dough in another. We use a frosted finish on the quartz to scatter that heat. Instead of a laser beam, you get a warm blanket of infrared energy that covers the whole pizza. This means you get that perfect, golden-brown crust and melted cheese across the entire pie without having to manually rotate the tray. Getting the heat just right These heaters use short-wave IR, which means they hit full temperature almost the second you flip the switch. No more waiting around for the oven to pre-heat for an hour. You can flick the power on and off quickly to keep the temperature exactly where it needs to be. When you pair these with a convection system, you get the best of both worlds. The fans handle the moisture and the ambient heat, while the IR lamps do the heavy lifting to get that fast, crispy browning. A few things to keep in mind Now, this kind of power puts some stress on your gear. Since the heaters switch on and off so fast, you need to make sure your wiring and contactors can actually handle the load. And because these lamps get incredibly hot, you can’t skimp on insulation. If your cooling fans aren’t up to the task, you’re looking at a warped oven frame or fried electronics. It’s a lot of energy, so you have to manage it. Maintenance is easy—it’s basically a drop-in replacement—but you’ve got to keep the tubes clean. If grease builds up on the frosted surface, it blocks the heat. That makes the lamp overheat, and eventually, it’ll just snap. Keep them clean, and they’ll keep humming.