- Official Post
Maximus Wood Fired Pizza Oven
Description from the vendor:
The outer wall is aluminum, the inner wall is stainless steel. In between the double walls and underneath the floor tiles is an insulating ceramic blanket. The design allows for much quicker heat up times: approx 20 min. as opposed to approx 1 hour for brick ovens. Of course this also means that the oven will not hold the heat for as long as refractory brick wood fired ovens. Maximus features an innovative stainless steel baffle inside which makes the hot fire smoke travel back and forth inside the oven thereby extracting more heat from the hot smoke and ensuring cleaner air emmissions. This is the system employed in most modern EPA heating wood stoves, made for higher heat efficiency and reduced air pollution.
The stainless steel chimney is removable for easy transporting.
The oven floor is made of (removable) refractory tiles, and the front of the oven is in decor bricks refractory cement (Lafarge).
My experience and opinion:
I've had the pleasure of using a Maximus Wood Fired Pizza Oven for approximately a year. In that time I've used it somewhere between 30 to 50 times to make a variety of food.
I've been able to make some fantastic pizzas and have also used it for a few roasts and some focaccias. I'll share some of my cooks in subsequent posts in this thread. Maximus is an absolute marvel for pizza and it is amazingly adept at Neapolitan style 400c pizzas cooked in 90 seconds. At high temps and with the Neapolitan style of dough the results are simply amazing for such an economic and small oven.
Making focaccias and roasts takes a little more management, but is equally satisfying. I've found that the top of these cooks faster than the bottom, but with a few flips and turns the outcome is still excellent. The main limitation for roasts is that you can really only fit one food tray in, this is generally fine if you're cooking a roast for up to 4 people, but it would be difficult to practically feed larger numbers. Having said that, the flavour imparted by the wood fire is amazing. To date, the best roast potatoes I've ever cooked have been in the Maximus.
The good:
It shines at making pizza and it does a particularly brilliant job with fast pizza where many other wood fired ovens fail.
Cooked at around 400c pizzas are ready in 60 to 90 seconds and cook evenly top and bottom. This is a rare and major feat, particularly for such a small oven.
You'll only ever fit one pizza in at a time, but it will cook so fast that you'll barely be able to keep up.
Roasts develop a great flavour thanks to the wood fire. Roast potatoes are amazing!
Managing the fire in a Maximus is straight forward. For extended cooks you can keep adding wood as you go and I've found temp management to be easy. Like all wood fired cookers, it generates a large amount of smoke until the fire is going. Thereafter you'll hardly detect any smoke at all.
Maximus weighs around 50Kg (including firebricks). When mounted onto a wheeled trolley it can easily be wheeled and moved around the deck. The light weight also allows usage of this oven in spaces that would normally not be suitable for a WFO, such as a wooden deck. I've seen videos of the "Pizza Party" WFO (which is a very similar unit that is not available in Australia) being used on an apartment's balcony. With careful and judicious management I think Maximus would be fine to use on a balcony also, but the specifics of strata, friendliness of neighbours and wind patters of each apartment unit differ, so proceed with caution.
The not so good:
My Maximus developed a couple of hairline cracks after the first cook. They are still exactly the same now, more than one year later, so I don't deem this to be a big issue as it doesn't affect the cooking in any way and they are also not very visible.
The unit is sold as portable and the fire bricks can be removed. However There is a good chance that they will break in handling when you do this, so I would not recommend it.
I recently needed to move house and had to do this. 2 fire bricks broke. Fortunately the seller (http://www.my-woodfiredoven.com.au/maximus-ovens) is fantastic. They kindly sent out two replacement fire bricks for me and I was back in action.
Verdict:
I love the Maximus Pizza oven. It has served me well for over a year and shows no signs of stopping. I've been able to recreate real Italian style pizza at home and cooked a few roasts and focaccia's along the way that were also excellent.
In comparison to other WFOs Maximus is small. However this is also the very reason I bought it as I would not have been able to fit a larger or heavier unit in my cooking area.
The small size of Maximus does not impact it's temperature range and the oven easily reaches 400c and above, making it ideal for anyone that has space or weight restrictions in their outdoor cooking area, but that would still like to produce 90 second pizzas.
The baffle at the top of the oven directs heat in all the right ways for pizza and the results are better than what is achievable in many high dome brick WFOs.