How we cut pizza bake times from 5 minutes to 90 seconds
Most convection ovens work by heating up the air, and then waiting for that air to slowly soak into the dough. It’s a slow process. We decided to skip the middleman. By using 250W shortwave infrared tubes, we stop worrying about the air entirely. These tubes shoot energy straight into the food. The result? Your bake time drops from 300 seconds down to just 90. It’s fast. Really fast. And that changes everything for your kitchen’s flow. The heat is instant We went with the 250W rating because it gives you a concentrated blast of heat without melting your oven frame. Since this is radiation and not conduction, there’s no “warm-up” period. You don’t have to wait for the oven cavity to get saturated with heat before you slide a pie in. You just start cooking. This means you can push out way more pizzas without needing a bigger kitchen. Why quartz matters We build these tubes out of high-purity quartz. Standard glass would just crack under the pressure of rapid heating and cooling, but quartz handles the shock like a pro. The filaments are designed specifically to hit the wavelengths that water and fats love. That’s why the toppings bubble up so quickly. One quick tip: if you’re installing these into an old setup, make sure your sockets are tight. A loose fit is a recipe for arcing, and that’ll burn out your tubes way faster than they should. Finding the sweet spot Here is the catch: switching to IR changes how you think about heat. You’ll get a beautiful, fast sear on the cheese and toppings, but you still need that bottom heat from the stone to do its job. If you crank the IR tubes too high but your stone is cold, you’ll end up with burnt pepperoni and raw dough. It’s a balancing act. You’ll want to play around with the distance between the tube and the pizza to avoid any scorched spots. Also, don’t forget the shielding. You want the heat hitting the pizza, not your staff.