V-Zug oven with pizza setting: a hot commodity
22/7/2026
Translation: Katherine Martin
To make a good pizza, you need decent dough, quality ingredients and heat. Lots of heat. While most ovens fall at this very hurdle, V-Zug has demonstrated how simple it is to implement.
Without special kitchen equipment, some culinary delights just don’t turn out right. Fancy making ice cream? Then you’ll need an ice cream maker. Want to whip up some cream soup? Then you’ll need a mixer or hand blender. As for pizza, I was always convinced a bog-standard oven would do the job. After all, heat crisps up dough and melts cheese, right? Wrong!
When I dabbled with pizza-making a few years back, I was forced to accept that regular ovens don’t even come close to baking the perfect pizza. My attempts always resulted in either a doughy crust with a perfect base, or a dry base with a crispy crust. How naive I was!
The consensus among amateur pizza chefs is that standard ovens aren’t hot enough. This has given rise to some outlandish online tutorials on how to modify your oven to get it to reach temperatures of 300 degrees and above. Personally, I’d rather not risk causing a power outage on my street or burning down my kitchen, so I’m content with the 230 degrees my combi-steamer provides. Though hot enough for a decent sheet pan pizza, it can’t deliver the kind of crispy or light pizzas you’d get in New York or Naples. To cook one of those, my oven would need to be at least 100 degrees hotter.
Pizza ovens – a hot commodity
In the last few years, pizza ovens have been popping up all over the place. From electric configurations to varieties fuelled by wood, pellets or gas, there are pizza ovens suited to balconies, kitchens and portable use. I’ve already tested several of them.
Swiss oven manufacturer V-Zug has seen the signs of the times. Which is why Galaxus photographer Chris and I are sitting in a conference room with a built-in kitchen, watching a PowerPoint presentation boasting photos of pizzas, Naples and good-looking people in their kitchens. It’s the obligatory activity before we move on to the «laid-back part of the event».
The emotionally charged images are supposed to convey a message that’s actually pretty quick to explain: V-Zug’s premium ovens have a pizza setting that reaches temperatures up to 350 degrees. Temperatures that were previously reserved for dedicated pizza ovens.
V-Zug didn’t take long to develop the oven. It’s been manufacturing ovens capable of reaching temperatures up to 500 degrees for some time now, albeit only for self-cleaning purposes. In a process known as pyrolysis, this searing heat burns grease and food residue in the oven down to ash.
All the engineers had to do was take these ovens and add a pizza setting that fell between the «baked» and «burnt-to-a-cinder» stages, i.e. between 250 and 500 degrees.
«But it wasn’t that simple,» explains Marc Schönenberger, a food engineer at V-Zug. «We had to pass a safety inspection before we were allowed to create a 350-degree pizza setting». Although these ovens reach even higher temperatures than the pizza setting, you should never open the oven door at this heat. «We’ve now added a professional pizza function to all of our top-of-the-range models that support pyrolysis,» Schönenberger says.
Now it’s my turn
The thing is, it takes more than just heat to make a good pizza. That’s why V-Zug also sells a set, complete with a baking steel and a pizza peel. Although compatible baking stones from other pizza oven manufacturers work too, only the V-Zug set has been tested with the brand’s in-house recipes. This is where Timo Hagemes, who’s essentially V-Zug’s Jamie Oliver, comes in.
He develops recipes that are guaranteed to turn out well on the Swiss company’s stovetops and in its ovens. Lately, he’s been spending a lot of time making pizza. When I meet him, he skilfully demonstrates how to shape a ball of dough into a pizza, before spreading some sauce on it and topping it with mozzarella. In one swift motion, Timo transfers the pizza from the peel to the pizza stone that’s been preheated in the oven. It takes less than 20 seconds for the crust to puff up like an inflatable dingy.
Three and a half minutes later, we’re tucking into our first pizza slices of the afternoon. As it turns out, they really do taste better than the fare you’d get at a bang-average pizzeria. The crust is soft, the base is slightly firm and the mozzarella hasn’t dried out yet. There’s a world of difference between this pizza and the ones I tried to make at 200 degrees.
Now it’s my turn. After tying an apron around my waist, I set about shaping the dough just as beautifully as Chef Hagemes is teaching me to do. The first rule he sets me is to shape the dough by hand. There’s no sign of a rolling pin here. After that, I’m supposed to manoeuvre the pizza onto the peel and slide it into the oven.
Four minutes and an encouraging «that’s great for your first pizza!» later, my pizza-adjacent dough topped with tomatoes and mozzarella comes out of the oven.
The oven may well reach over 350 degrees, but unfortunately, it can’t make up for an unpractised hand. I leave the session resolving to stick with sheet pan pizza. After all, my oven can just about hit 230 degrees.
Simon Balissat
Teamleader Editorial
Simon.Balissat@digitecgalaxus.chWhen I flew the family nest over 15 years ago, I suddenly had to cook for myself. But it wasn’t long until this necessity became a virtue. Today, rattling those pots and pans is a fundamental part of my life. I’m a true foodie and devour everything from junk food to star-awarded cuisine. Literally. I eat way too fast.
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