F.A.Q
Frequently Asked Questions
This page provides answers to the most common questions regarding our ovens
IMPORTANT
Never forget to read the instruction manual before use and to get a licensed professional to install the oven in a closed space.
1. Customer Service
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2. Domestic Ovens
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3. Professional Ovens
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1. Customer Service
In the first sublet you will find the answers to the most frequently asked questions concerning the customer service for professionals and amateurs.
Of course! You can get in touch with us at any time by:
- clicking this link on our website.
- writing an e-mail to [email protected]
- calling the phone number +39 0775.7821
- calling EVA, our virtual assistant, by clicking the icon at the bottom right of all pages of our website.
Our customer service is available in 4 languages to meet the needs of our customers all over the world.
If you need assistance with malfunction, breakdown or spare parts, contact one of our dealers.
Contact your nearest Alfa’s dealer for technical support or write to [email protected]
All our ovens have a two-year warranty covering all types of failure due to malfunctioning parts, manufacturing problems or premature wear even if these events rarely occur.
2. Domestic Oven Section
This subset is about Alfa home pizza ovens, great cooking gear to make a fist of spending summer nights baking with family and friends. Bake a real Neapolitan pizza at 450°C (840°F) in a wood-fired oven and continue to impress your guests with your succulent dishes.
Alfa was born as a manufacturer of traditional wood-fired ovens and, since the very beginning, has focused on improving refractory materials in order to gain better thermal performance. Today, Alfa produces high-calibre commercial and residential ovens and has renewed the home sector by developing the Forninox™ technology.
So, we have come up with the idea to insulate a refractory wood-burning oven by coating it with layers of stainless-steel. This has enabled us to improve the thermal performances of the appliance, to drastically reduce its weight and to facilitate its mobility by adding high-resistance castors.
Alfa ovens produced with this technology have much lower energy consumption than competing products and take less time to reach the cooking temperature.
Alfa steel ovens are simpler to use than traditional refractory ones as you can manage fire more easily thanks to their compact structure that allows hot air to circulate inside them and to maximise heat while baking. In addition, the low weight makes them suitable for a variety of uses.
Virtually everywhere. The steel ovens come in a mobile version with casters for using them on the terrace, in the garden then putting them indoors during the winter months. Our range also features small-sized models if space is in short supply. With the tiny ONE compact pizza oven, you will be able to bake even on your balcony.
Gas-fired ovens can be connected to the gas supply or to a LPG cylinder.
To install an Alfa steel oven, follow just a few simple steps:
- Place the base of the structure.
- Insert the chimney cowl into the flue.
- Put the chimney cowl and the flue into the dome of the oven.
If you have got a wood-fired oven you can immediately start using it, while if you have a gas-fired (or hybrid) model you will have to make sure to connect it to the gas main or to the LPG cylinder using the supplied hose and fixing it with a clamp. If you want to make your own traditional pizza oven, things are a little bit more complicated as you will have to build a foundation out of bricks and concrete, to assemble the different parts of the dome and to coat the oven with additional refractory material. To learn more about this, here is the tutorial on how to assemble a traditional oven.
For a gas-burning oven, just turn the knob, push the ignition button and adjust the flame. If you have got a wood-burning oven, build a fire in the centre of the oven using some sticks of dry kindling then add some pieces of hardwood as the fire gets going. Then add some logs of about 5-10 cm in diameter to form enough embers.
Of course, the bigger the oven, the more firewood you will need to reach the cooking temperature. In the larger models, we recommend moving the fire all over the oven floor to heat it evenly. Use dry, seasoned hardwoods to avoid dense, black smoke that could ruin your dishes.
When lighting the wood-fired oven, it is necessary that the heat be built gradually up to a temperature of about 300 °C (570 °F) to dry out the moisture and to gently “season” the oven refractories so that they can deliver superb cooking results.
In terms of heat and aromatic value, the best wood species are oak and beech. Never use evergreen wood that burns fast and can leave heavy deposits of soot and creosote. Learn more about this topic by reading the article in our blog on choosing the firewood with the best heat value.
Pretty much everything. Thanks to the very high temperatures they reach, Alfa ovens are particularly suitable for baking Neapolitan pizza in about one minute at 450 °C (840 °F) but nothing prevents you from using them at lower temperatures to cook bread, roasts, fish, veg, puddings and whatnot. Have a look at the recipes here on our blog. Put a new spin on your dishes cooking with a wood-fired oven.
You can bake any kind of pizza in our ovens. Remember, however, that pan pizza cooks at a lower temperature. Don’t be afraid to try to get a handle on the way your oven works.
Keeping your oven clean guarantees safety and better performances. Between two baking sessions just scrub the oven floor with a brush to remove food residue and burnt flour; for a deeper cleaning, let the oven cool and use a damp cloth to wipe burnt food away. If you have a wood-burning oven, remove the ashes with a metal shovel when the oven has completely cooled down.
Find out here how to properly maintain your oven and extend its life.
Alfa home ovens can be customised by choosing the type of fuel (firewood, gas or hybrid) or available colour.
For manufacturing reasons, Alfa can’t make custom-made ovens, but you will certainly find the model that best suits your needs in our wide product range.
You can find Alfa ovens at our authorised retailers. Our dealer network has many points of sale in Italy and abroad to spread technology and tradition as far as possible. Search for the nearest Alfa dealer by clicking on the link, or on our web page by selecting “Contacts” > ”Points of sale”. You can also get in touch with Eva, our virtual assistant, by clicking the icon at the bottom right of the screen.
Alfa ovens have great value for money. The price range varies by model and by fuel type.
To find out the prices, contact the nearest Alfa dealer, ask for a quote by clicking here or ask Eva, the virtual assistant, by clicking the message icon at the bottom right of the screen.
3. Commercial Oven Section
This subset is about hospitality industry professionals and provides answers to all your questions concerning Alfa commercial ovens. Alfa commercial ovens are high-quality appliances that guarantee excellent performance and low energy consumption thanks to the application of state-of-the-art technology.
Our commercial steel ovens are the go-to appliances to meet your needs and especially so if space is at a premium (a little bar or a food truck), if you want to improve your restaurant productivity without incurring huge increases in management costs or if you wish to ease the burden of your overworked kitchen by adding an outdoor oven for hiking up seating capacity during good weather.
Commercial ovens are usually larger and more efficient than home ones as they have to withstand major stress due to high production volume and to greater frequency of use.
For commercial steel ovens, there are 4 options:
- Wood
- Gas (Natural Gas or LPG)
- Hybrid (Wood and gas)
- Electric
For manufacturing reasons, Alfa can’t make custom-made ovens, but you will certainly find the model that best suits your needs in our wide product range. Most commercial models come in two versions, large and small, to satisfy even the most important production needs.
For manufacturing reasons, Alfa can’t make custom-made ovens, but you will certainly find the model that best suits your needs in our wide product range. Most commercial models come in two versions, large and small, to satisfy even the most important production needs.
Over the years, Alfa has developed a series of technological innovations, the result of an unparalleled passion for the work we do and the strong desire to go the extra mile for our customers.
Alfa’s major technological achievements are:
- Forninox™ technology: the structure is covered with a steel dome that increases thermal insulation and makes the oven more energy efficient. The ensuing weight reduction has made it possible to develop easy-to-move ovens.
- Compact Flame technology: with this innovation, gas-fired ovens replicate the strong flame of wood-burning counterparts by controlling the heat provided by radiation. These ovens heat up quickly and reach high temperatures just like wood-fired ovens do.
- Flue System technology™: Alfa’s latest patent innovation (2019) has to do with a special design of the oven that enables hot air to release all the heat before being dispersed up the flue. The heat value is maxed out, the thermal efficiency is improved, the energy consumption is reduced.
Refractory materials with high thermal efficiency: the building blocks of Alfa traditional ovens for over 40 years and still the key factors of success in today’s STAINLESS-steel ovens.
Alfa steel gas-fired ovens consume far less energy than traditional ones because of their high thermal efficiency. Some models equipped with the latest Compact Flame technology recreate the strong flame that browns food just like a wood-burning oven would.
Alfa wood-fired pizza ovens consume less energy than their competitors thanks to the high quality of refractory materials as well as the technological innovations that improve their thermal insulation.
The ovens that combine steel and refractories need to burn less firewood to deliver the same result as they make better use of the heat produced.
Some Alfa models are available in the hybrid version to alternate cooking styles burning firewood or gas. This is possible thanks to Alfa’s hybrid kit that makes “disappear” the gas burner safely when you light a wood fire in your oven. All Alfa hybrid ovens with Forninox™ technology consume less fuel whether they run on firewood or gas. For example, the commercial oven Quattro Pro that can bake up to 60 pizzas per hour (three at the same time) has an average consumption of:
- 4,5 kg/h of firewood
- 1,35 kg/h of LPG
- 1,80 m3/h of natural gas
You can use gas-fired ovens in kitchen equipped with an extractor hood, but you’ll need to connect to a chimney flue to let the smoke out of your wood-burning oven.
For decades, Alfa has been making the best firebricks as the raw materials for our high-performing and energy-efficient traditional wood-burning ovens.
As for the steel pizza ovens, we coat the refractory cooking chamber with three layers of different types of stainless-steel and we apply three extra powder coats to give them more weather resistance.
Our traditional wood-burning ovens have a 10 cm thick dome (double the average thickness) made from high-resistance refractory materials to keep the heat longer and extend your cooking sessions.
Fulfilling orders quickly in a small place like a food truck is not that easy but Alfa steel ovens fit well with the restaurant on wheels business as they are light and easy to handle. A hybrid or a gas-fired oven may be the winning solution for this kind of business. Learn more about Alfa food truck ovens.
Usually restaurants that have a small seating capacity (about thirty covers) do not need large ovens. In this case, go for a Quattro Pro, a high-yielding hybrid oven, if you don’t want to give up cooking with wood.
The commercial ovens in the kitchens of large restaurants must meet a high demand during short peak times day by day and particularly if it is a pizzeria. The most efficient Alfa steel oven is the Opera that can cook up to 7 pizzas at the same time and about 150 in an hour, a hybrid model available with or without base.
As for traditional refractory ovens, the largest models can bake up to 12 pizzas at once as is the case for the Special Pizzeria, a wood or gas-burning oven with a diameter of 160 cm.
- Alfa ovens guarantee precise cooking with maximum thermal efficiency due to the application of state-of-the-art technology. All our products are made to last even if they are used outdoors in the most adverse weather conditions thanks to their solid structure and multilayer powder coating. The steel ovens are particularly light and easy to move so they can take up any challenge in the kitchen. Furthermore, Alfa is synonymous with “Made in Italy”, designer ovens that enhance and combine Italian tradition and know-how and take It to the next level with the latest innovations such as:
Didn’t find what you were looking for?
The Alfa team is always here to provide you with all the information you are looking for and to advise you in finding the oven that best meets your needs as a professional or amateur.
For any question or any further information, feel free to contact us:
- by clicking this link on our website.
- by writing an e-mail to [email protected].
- by calling the toll-free number +39 0775.7821
- by calling EVA, our virtual assistant (by clicking the icon at the bottom right of all pages of our website).
