Wood-fired and multi-fuel
Bertello Grande: the only oven here that burns gas and wood at once
Everyone else makes you choose a fuel per session. Bertello's answer is to run both — gas for temperature control, wood for the char — with burners above and below the stone.
The short answer
Buy the Grande if you want wood flavor without giving up temperature control. Running gas and wood simultaneously is a genuinely different design and it resolves the trade every other multi-fuel oven asks you to accept. The costs: 900 F rather than the 950 F rivals publish, and Bertello publishes neither weight nor stone thickness.
Every other oven on this site treats fuel as a mode. You are in wood mode or you are in gas mode, and switching means changing hardware. Bertello treats it as two systems that run together, and that is a materially different idea.
Why simultaneous is not a gimmick
The core tension in wood-fired cooking is that the fire does two jobs badly at once. It has to hold the chamber at temperature — a steady, boring job that a gas burner does perfectly — and it has to produce the live rolling flame that chars a rim, which is the only thing gas cannot replicate.
Splitting those jobs between two systems is the obvious solution and almost nobody does it. Gas holds the floor and the chamber where you want them; a small wood fire supplies the flame and the character. You are no longer feeding a fire to maintain temperature, which is the part of wood cooking that competes for attention with stretching dough.
Burners above and below the stone
Bertello calls this the FlameThrower dual burner system: one burner under the stone and one above it. Under-stone heating is unusual in this category, and it directly attacks the problem that dominates the rest of this site — a floor that gives up its stored heat into consecutive pizzas and slows down.
An oven that can actively reheat its floor from underneath does not depend on stone mass the way a top-fired oven does. Given that Bertello does not publish a stone thickness, that is a fortunate piece of engineering: the mechanism that would normally make thickness critical has been partly removed.
The 16 by 16 inch square stone
Square, not round, and 16 in on each side. For round pizzas that is simply a large surface. For the styles that are not round — Sicilian, Detroit-style, focaccia, sheet-pan bakes — a square floor uses space a round one wastes, and this is the only oven on this site with that geometry.
What to weigh against it
900 F, not 950 F. Bertello publishes 900 F, reached in as little as 10 minutes on gas, against the 950 F almost everything else here claims. Fifty degrees is not much in absolute terms, and at the Neapolitan end of the range it is the part that does the most work. It is a real, if modest, difference.
No published weight and no published stone thickness. Two of the numbers that this site's comparison tables are built on, absent. That is a genuine mark against an otherwise interesting product, and it is why the Grande sits below the Karu 2 Pro and the Roccbox in the roundup rather than above them.
Two systems to maintain. Two burners means two things to clean and two things that can fail, and the wood side still produces ash.
Quick picks
Ranked for fit, not for hype. Every figure below is the maker’s own published number, and “n/p” means they do not publish it — which is itself worth knowing. Tap a row for the full write-up, or go straight to the listing.
| # | Oven | Best for | Max pizza | Weight | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BertelloNo photo Bertello GrandeThe only oven here that fires gas and wood simultaneously by design, and the only one with burners both above and bel... | Running gas and wood at the same time | 16" | n/p | Check price on Amazon |
Max pizza and weight are the makers’ published figures, sourced on each write-up below. Neither is a measurement we took, and no column here is a score — we have not cooked on these ovens and will not pretend otherwise.
Top pick · Running gas and wood at the same time
Bertello Grande 16 in Gas and Wood Outdoor Pizza Oven
Bertello · Multi-fuel
The only oven here that fires gas and wood simultaneously by design, and the only one with burners both above and below the stone. Different engineering, and a real answer to the fuel argument.
Published specification
- Max temperature
- 900 F, reached in as little as 10 minutes on gas
- Stone
- 16 x 16 in
- Fuel
- Gas alone, or gas and wood simultaneously
- Burners
- FlameThrower dual burner — one under the stone, one above
- Included
- Oven, gas burner, wood tray, 16 x 16 in stone
What it does well
- Simultaneous gas and wood is the honest solution to the wood-versus-gas trade: gas holds the temperature, wood supplies the smoke
- A burner under the stone is unusual and it directly attacks the recovery problem that thin stones cause
- A square 16 x 16 in stone suits pan and Sicilian shapes that round stones waste
What you give up
- 900 F rather than the 950 F most rivals publish — a real, if small, difference at the Neapolitan end
- Bertello does not publish weight or stone thickness in the listing specification, so two comparison numbers are missing
- Two fuel systems means two things to clean and two things that can fail
Buy it if
The cook who wants wood flavor but refuses to lose temperature control to get it.
Skip it if
Anyone chasing a strict 950 F Neapolitan bake.
Where these numbers came from
How these picks were made
We did not cook on these ovens. Every figure on this page is the maker’s or the listing’s published specification, cited on each write-up so you can check it in one click. The ranking comes from matching those published capabilities to a stated use case — space, pizza size, fuel, and how many pizzas you cook in a row. Where a maker does not publish a number, we say so instead of estimating one.
The full version of that argument, including what we deliberately do not claim, is on our methodology page.
