Fontana Forni has made a name for themselves by making high quality, Italian-made pizza ovens for the outdoor kitchen market. Their latest oven is a perfect blend of that traditional iconic Italian pizza oven style and performance with the newest technology.
They officially released the Volta pizza oven today which is their most powerful oven yet. It flexes its cooking muscles with a redesigned higher output burner to reduce heat times, and connected technology to make it easy to cook a ton of different food.
Digital Temperature Control
The Volta takes all the guesswork out of temperature control. There’s a digital display on the front that not only tells you the temperature of the oven, but actually lets you control it. That’s a big deal because most ovens with a digital display just have it as a thermometer.
For the first time, cooks can set an exact temperature and rely on the oven to manage itself, without giving up the hands-on experience that makes outdoor cooking so personal. It brings confidence and consistency to everyday cooking, while still leaving room for live fire when you want it.
Jeremy Lande, CEO at Fontana Forni USA
The technology on the Volta takes it to the next level with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity to let you control the temperature of the oven anywhere. The oven interfaces with the newly developed Fontana app.
In addition to control, the Volta also gives you visibility into your cook with two included temperature probes. Those are perfect for cooking different proteins when you’re not cooking just pizza.
Build Quality
When you spend more money on a quality oven, you want it to be just that, quality. The Volta brings that with a solid-welded stainless steel dome. It makes the oven pretty hefty, which is exactly what you want.
The dome on the oven is fully insulated. This helps with efficiency, keeping the heat in, and also making the outside of the oven safe to touch.
There are two sizes of the Volta that are out now, the Volta 70 and the Volta 90. The Volta 70 weighs in at 238 lbs while the Volta 90 ups that to 287 lbs.
The Volta has a countertop design, so while it will find its way in many outdoor kitchens, it can also be used with a cart. Fontana offers some really nice cart options that match the style of the oven. Keep in mind when you think of placement you need electricity to power the display on the oven.
The body of the oven is powder-coated black which works well with the stainless steel face. Fontana will have some other color options soon.
Cooking
To add to the versatility of the Volta, it’s a hybrid oven. It can run on natural gas, propane, or you can get a wood-fire conversion kit for it.
They did a nice job designing the fire grate for burning wood because it sits right above the gas burner. That means you don’t have to give up any cooking space for the grate like on other ovens.
The Volta 70 has quite a bit of cooking space at 480 square inches, which is big enough to fit two 12″ pizzas side-by-side. To give an idea of the space for other food, that’s about 50% larger than the main cooking area on a 2-burner gas grill. The Volta 90 is huge at 620 square inches, which will fit three pizzas, and lots of other food.
The high-powered burners on the oven will heat it up to 900 degrees F, and heat to it 750 degrees F in 30 minutes or less. Having lots of power is important on an oven for not only heating up but also for rebounding.
When you put cold food on a hot surface, it drops the surface temperature. It’s up to the burners to make sure it can get back to your desired temperature quickly, or rebound.
Beyond the burners, the thick stones in the bottom of the oven soak in the heat to prevent temperature drop and give that desirable Neapolitan pizza crust. That’s what it’s really about with a pizza oven, and where the Volta really shines. It takes much less dialing in to get that perfect crust.