Breville Smart Oven Review

For those lacking the space, whether indoor or outdoor, for a conventional portable pizza oven, consider the Breville Smart Oven a countertop jack-of-all-trades. Even though it appears bulky, this indoor oven has one of the smallest footprints of any included in this review. The “smart” refers to Breville's patented Element IQ technology — engineers have pre-determined the optimal time and heat settings based on the food you're cooking, delivering “precise and stable” heat for quick and easy cooking. While this oven package includes a 13" pizza tin, a few accessories like a 13" pizza stone, pizza cutter, and garlic press, are all affordable upgrades guaranteed to improve your pizza baking experience.

Performance Comparison

Cooking Performance

When it comes to baking pizzas, it is tough to compare with the straightforward convenience of the Breville Smart Oven. The oven comes preset with a “pizza” function that automatically adjusts the temperature and time based on the pizza size you plan on baking. A 13-inch pizza tin sets the upper limit of size, dialing the temperature into a stable 450°F for a recommended 14-minute bake time. While we focused on baking fresh pizzas for the sake of comparison to other ovens, the Smart Oven also comes preset to handle frozen pizzas. This feature ties in the oven's convection capability that helps circulate the cold air of the frozen pie out and away for more efficient baking.

It takes a mere five minutes for this oven to preheat up to 450°F when it automatically begins its countdown. If you plan to use the accessory pizza stone instead of the provided tin, it is a good idea to add extra time to this preheat cycle to give adequate time for the stone to absorb heat. In the same vein, we regularly needed to add two minutes to finish baking the crust, bringing the average bake time closer to 16 minutes. As a result, we wouldn't recommend relying on the Smart Oven for a pizza party that will require you to churn out multiple pies — this is a one, or perhaps a two-and-done sort of oven.

Longer bake times and lower internal baking temperatures mean that you cannot expect to achieve the soft, pillowy crust of a Neapolitan-style oven. But for a model that is essentially a beefed-up toaster oven, overall, it does a fantastic job of adding just the right amount of golden tinge to the crust on both the top and bottom — an achievement in itself, particularly when you factor in the convenience of the Smart Oven. Incidentally, it is also excellent at reheating pizza. The enclosed environment of the well-insulated oven is inherently moist, which curiously seems to freshen up the toppings rather than drying them out, an unfortunate consequence so common to reheating pizza in a normal range.

Output Power

Despite its intelligent predisposition aimed at optimal baking, the pure output power is definitely in deficit with the Smart Oven. The five quartz heating elements — three on top, two on the bottom — produce 1800W of power, an impressive output for an electric oven. Even so, an average maximum internal air temperature of 503°F puts this countertop oven squarely in the bottom 40th percentile when it comes to cooking temperature.

However, the quartz elements are incredibly consistent, as verified by tests using an infrared thermometer. Internal air temperature averages are slightly higher than the 450°F setting, and temperature readings taken of the pizza tin directly after baking averaged 453°F. These readings translate to very consistent results — pizzas that more than pass in terms of quality, particularly for those lovers of chewier, ever-so-slightly crisped crusts.

This consistency is further supported by the Smart Oven's insulation. The brushed stainless steel sidewalls are thick, and the low tolerance of the door provides an excellent seal. As a result, it can take as little as one minute to reheat this oven back up to 450°F in between pizzas. Breville claims that the convection setting “reduces cooking time by up to 30%”, but this isn't as helpful with baking fresh pizzas, where the trouble already lies in the cooking rate of the base trying to catch up to the top of the pizza.

Control

To solve the issue of uneven cooking between toppings and crust, perhaps you add a heating element to the base of the oven. In the meantime, it is possible to shift the rack to the lowest of the three possible positions to bring it closer to the lower heating elements. Fortunately, anecdotal evidence from our own experience shows that even if you need an additional few minutes to crisp the crust up to your standards of taste, you don't need to worry about the top of the pizza overcooking.

Functionality is a huge plus for the Smart Oven when compared directly to other indoor pizza oven options. Not only does it come preset with a pizza function, but it is possible to adjust the temperature, time, the size of pizza (which is directly related to temperature and time settings), as well as the option to cook like a convection oven. Depending on your tastes and pizza preferences, we recommend taking the time to experiment to find your ideal settings. Best of all, this “smart” oven will remember those settings and store them until the system is unplugged or otherwise reset.

Ease of Use

An interesting functional decision related to ease of use is the auto standby cycle that automatically kicks in once the baking cycle ends. While this is a thoughtful touch from the standpoint of safety, it can be annoying when you're trying to cook rounds of pizzas. If you don't manually start the baking cycle again, the oven will begin to cool and thus need additional time to reheat between pies. Additionally, when using the pizza setting specifically, it would be a convenient reminder if this Smart Oven beeped halfway through the cooking cycle to remind you of the requisite pizza turn to ensure even cooking.

Beyond our few very specific criticisms, this oven could not be more user-friendly. The large LCD screen is easy to read, and the buttons are well-labeled and intuitive, making the entire system very easy to navigate right off the bat. And for those who want to dive into the more sophisticated capabilities of the Smart Oven, a sizable yet easily referenced user manual will help you tweak the presets to accommodate personal preferences.

For those lacking real estate in their kitchen, particularly those apartment kitchens that don't include a full-range oven, this is a competent countertop oven capable of handling a wide array of tasks beyond just baking pizzas. The oven chamber measures just over 0.52 cubic feet, offering ample space for other cooking or baking. We particularly appreciate the preset “cookie” function, conveniently located just underneath the “pizza” function.

Should You Buy the Breville Smart Oven?

Although it may not be the ideal pizza oven, for those aspiring pizza makers working under less than ideal conditions, the Smart Oven is more than a reasonable option for those relegated to indoor cooking. Offered at a fair price point, particularly when compared directly to other pizza ovens, the value of this oven is only bolstered by its versatility. Though there is a slight tradeoff of taste for convenience, when one considers the versatility of this oven well-beyond just cooking pizzas, it is easy to deem this oven a stylish investment for any kitchen.

What Other Pizza Ovens Should You Consider?

Even though cooking pizzas inside isn't quite as charming as cooking outdoors with a wood-burning outdoor oven, the Breville Smart Oven is a quality countertop oven capable of producing relatively quality pizzas. But if you have the space and the funds, there are quite a few ovens that we like better. The Gozney Roccbox is one of our overall favorites for its incredible heat retention and quick cook times. The BakerStone Original is another excellent option that is closer in price to the Breville and has more specialized features perfect for turning out great pizzas.