About
An independent publication about home pizza ovens, written by one person who reads the manuals and does the arithmetic.
What this site is
Crust & Coal covers home pizza ovens — gas, wood-fired and electric — one model at a time. The work is comparing what the makers actually publish, matching those published capabilities to real use cases, and being explicit about where the published record runs out.
That last part turns out to be most of the value. This is a category where nearly every oven claims 950 F and a 60-second pizza, where almost no maker publishes a burner rating, and where several do not publish a weight or a stone thickness. Sorting out which differences are real is genuinely useful, and it does not require a test kitchen.
Who writes it
Scooter M.. An enthusiast who is genuinely into this. I read the manuals, compile the published specifications, and do the arithmetic. No lab coat, and no oven of yours that I have stood next to.
No qualifications are claimed because none are held. There is no test lab, no panel of experts, and nobody here has a certification in anything relevant to pizza. What there is: a reading of every manufacturer specification sheet in this category, and a willingness to say when one is missing.
What we do not claim
The reason we say it so loudly is that a large part of this category does the opposite. Roundups that have clearly handled none of the twelve ovens they rank, described in the language of hands-on experience, are the norm rather than the exception. We would rather be narrower and checkable.
Where specifications cannot substitute for experience — how an oven feels to launch into, whether a hinge is reassuring, what the fourth pizza is genuinely like — we do not fill the gap with an impression we did not form.
How it is funded
Affiliate links, disclosed on every page that carries one. When you buy through a link here we may earn a commission, at no additional cost to you. Full detail on the affiliate disclosure page, and the editorial firewall around it is described in our editorial policy.
How to check us
Every specification figure on this site carries a source link to the manufacturer page or the retail listing it came from. If a number here is wrong, that link is where you will find out. If you spot one, tell us — a corrected page is worth more than a defended one.
Our full working method, including what we deliberately do not do, is set out on the methodology page.