Cru Champion Pizza Oven Review: The Ultimate Pizza Oven

In This Review
Performance | Quality | Design | Value | Usability | Maintenance | Setup | Accessories | Specs | Product Evolution | Comparison | FAQs

Performance Summary

At Modern Castle we test 5 different factors that impact the performance, build quality, and usability of the Cru Champion Pizza Oven.

Chef Nathan has cooked using pizza stones, DIY brick ovens, propane ovens, and now 2 versions of Cru wood-fired ovens. He has had many years as an at-home amateur pizza maker and bread baker.

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The Cru Champion Pizza Oven is a joy to cook with and the real deal in terms of performance. It heats up fast, stays heated for a long time, and is able to cook food incredibly quickly. After a few uses, I wanted to open up a stall at the local farmer’s market.

Preheating

In order to properly preheat the Cru Champion oven you will need to build a fire in the middle of the stones and push the logs back when the rest of the oven gets to the appropriate temperature (800-900 degrees for Neapolitan pizza).

This is where you can decide if you want to use the wood-burning rack or not. We did for our initial tests, but it is not necessary.

We used eight pieces of kindling in our initial fire and the results were shocking. Cru says the Champion preheats in 20 minutes, and other ovens I’ve used have taken as long as 30 minutes. In our tests with the Cru, it took less than 15 minutes.

The thermometer reached 850 degrees in only 12 minutes and 50 seconds. The side rack was probably a contributing factor.

If you’re going to cook two pizzas at a time, do not use the side rack as you will need that space for the extra pie.

Cook times

The Cru Champion is more than capable of cooking classic Neapolitan style pizza in the lightning fast speed of 90-120 seconds. Granted, we used the side wood burning rack, which provided an extra heat source.

In our tests, the fastest evenly cooked pizza was cooked in 96 seconds.

On Cru’s website there are tips to help you cook in different styles and other foods. I personally liked experimenting with lower heat to produce a pizza that gets a crispy crust more like a NY style. This overlaps with your dough making process, as you can modify its humidity levels to help achieve this as well.

Although, the unique ability of ovens like the Champion is their ability to cook at 900 degrees and let the wood smoke wash over the pizza as it cooks to inject its flavor in the process.

If you would like to minimize the smoky flavor, you can wait for the flame to die down and coals to maintain the heat. The insulation of the oven will keep heat incredibly well and we were able to cook with fires that were past their noticeable flame.

As you can see from the thermometer in the above image, the oven has kept the optimal heat (yellow zone) with low flames present.

Evenness

During our initial tests, the evenness of pizzas was thrown off by the heat of the refractory bricks (pizza stones). These pizza bricks just refused to lose their heat, as measured by our thermometer gun. We had let the fire preheat in the middle for too long due to taking pictures and running other tests.

During subsequent uses, the bricks stayed at a better cooking temperature (500 – 600 degrees) when we pushed the fire back as soon as the oven preheated.

The above image is a later attempt with an oven temperature above 800° F degrees and pizza stone temperature at 600° F.

Learning how to adjust to stuff like an overly hot pizza stone is a big part of the fun when cooking with a wood-fired oven.

In this scenario where the bottom cooks too fast, the tip is to slide your pizza peel under the cooking pizza to spare the bottom while the rest finishes cooking.

Even still, the resulting pizzas the Champion produced were incredible. They have big puffy crusts, slightly crispy undercarriages, and an evenly cooked top. The way the smoke rolls over the pizza as it cooks gives it a distinctly traditional taste. 

Despite that initial setback, getting pizzas to come out evenly cooked was surprisingly easy. I was honestly expecting a lot more trial and error when preparing for these tests. Truly, the performance of this oven speaks for itself when you can get it so right on only the second try.

There was, however, plenty of learning when it came to safely and efficiently operating the oven. As I’ll detail later on, I’d recommend longer tools than I had in our tests in order to comfortably move the pizzas around while cooking. 

Overall, the performance of the Cru Champion boils down to super fast preheat times, amazing heat retention, and fantastically cooked pizzas. 

The quality of the Cru Champion Pizza Oven is excellent. Its 145 lbs of weight is used to great effect in order to ensure insulation and durability.

The oven is comprised of the following parts:

Part	Build Quality
Overall	Exceptional
Dome	Exceptional
Base	Exceptional
Chimney	Excellent
Refractory Bricks	Exceptional
Oven Door	Exceptional
Thermometer	Excellent

The dome uses 1” of ceramic stone with stainless steel on either side and is completed with a layer of lacquered aluminum on the outside. It gives a sleek, modern appearance while integrating traditional and effective materials.

One claim made by Cru is that the outside of the dome is designed to be safe-to-touch while the inside is at 900 degrees. We found this to be more or less true. Although, I would still avoid any prolonged contact with the outside until it has fully cooled down.

The surface temperature of the table the oven was sitting atop was surprisingly low as well. Be warned, however, the stainless steel on the front will be more than hot enough to cause burns.

The pizza stones themselves were also a noticeable step up in quality from other ovens I’ve experienced. The biggest difference is that they are four separate stones that are each a full inch thick and made of cordite. The result is extremely good heat retention, as discussed above.

Finally, the chimney has my only real complaint, albeit a cosmetic one. Almost every part of the oven stayed looking great after hours of use. The Chimney suffered some discoloration much like the half-door did in our Cru 32 G2 Oven review.

Due to its weight, the oven will most likely stay in one place for most buyers. As long as you choose a safe, sturdy spot for the Champion, it should last for decades with little to replace.

The design of the Cru Champion oven is traditional, yet modernized in some ways. The bricks themselves are traditional – produced in an artisanal style that results in a rugged look and minor imperfections. They make up the large, square cooking surface that is 24” x 24”.

The wood burning rack accommodates alternative cooking spots / styles by switching your fuel to the side, rather than back.

The rack is simply a loose, but sturdy metal accessory that focuses the flame / heat of the fire up towards the curve of the dome. We found it to be great for experimenting with how it affects the evenness and resulting smoky flavor of the pizzas we cooked.

Even when accounting for fire, it is designed to fit an 18” pizza, which is larger than many pizza chains offer. While the fire is in the back, you could fit two separate 10” pizzas to double your output.

The built-in thermometer was a great addition for easy access to the temperature. There is even a highlighted zone to quickly identify the optimal temperature. 

The aesthetic of the oven is something to be commended as well. The lacquered aluminum siding of the dome in combination with the stainless steel and stone looks great.

Finally, there are adjustable feet that bring the oven off the ground and give a little control on how much clearance it has from your surface.

The culmination of design choices for the Cru Champion is something traditional in terms of functionality and performance with a few modern touches in its convenience and appearance. 

The value of the Cru Champion pizza oven is fantastic with frequent use. With such a hefty price tag, it is not an entry-level oven to try once and collect dust. There are plenty of those cheap ovens on the market.

This oven is for those who want to entertain and impress. We say this for 4 main reasons:

• Its performance is near restaurant quality
• It looks incredible and modern
• Its size accommodates large groups
• It can last a lifetime if treated well

If the above is what you are looking for, the Champion is a fantastic option.

But where does it fit in the at-home pizza oven marketplace?

The Cru Champion is firmly in the high-tier range of pizza ovens for consumers. The next jump in quality would essentially be a restaurant-level oven with thicker walls and nearly no portability. At this size and quality, the price point of Champion is competitive but not a steal by any means.

The Cru Champion oven is extremely straightforward and easy to use if you have basic knowledge of wood-fired cooking. Considering the baseline work needed to operate a wood-fire oven, a fair amount of effort is required for its operation.

So in comparison to a conventional or propane-powered oven, some may find the following daunting:

• Learning to build and start a natural fire inside the oven
• Stoking the fire to maintain desired temperature
• Cleaning out the oven of ash and soot
• Rotating food at the correct times to ensure an even cook

If you’re looking into wood-fire ovens, these are always drawbacks one must contend with.

However, the Cru Champion has some nice features that make it a bit more convenient than the classic ovens of yesteryear. The wood burning rack, for example, provides an extra heat source without exposing an open flame so close to your food.

The built-in thermometer makes monitoring temperature easy, and we found it to be quite accurate (as confirmed with our handheld digital thermal gun). Although, I always recommend a separate thermometer gun to measure the temperature of the cooking surface.

The amazing insulation that we keep raving about makes maintaining temperature a less frequent chore. The design is optimal for cooking while allowing for a good deal of room to work with the fire and food.

Unlike the Cru 32 G2 pizza oven, the Champion does not have a removable top for easy maintenance.

Overall, the usability is hampered by the traditional style of its design, but when you factor in its great performance and extra features, it is about as good as it can get.

Maintenance

As far as maintenance is concerned, there are only a few things to consider:

• Removing soot buildup from the dome with a wet sponge or cloth
• Clearing ash once stones are cool
• Brushing or wiping fine ash residue off of brick/stone

Important note: never wash pizza brick/stone with a substantial amount of water. If you do, do not use the oven until it is dry (up to 24 hours). This is how you risk cracking your pizza stones.

Although, pizza stones and bricks will still function just fine while broken.

Setup

Setting up the Cru Champion oven is easy and takes only 5 to 10 minutes. Though, due to its size and weight, it is a two-person job at least.

There’s little to assemble, because the oven ships with the base, dome, four refractory bricks that serve as the cooking surface, and a thermometer already intact. The only loose items in the box were the door, wood burning rack, chimney (2 parts), and a replacement stone.

The actual assembly boiled down to the following steps:

• Removing oven from box
• Attaching the two chimney pieces together and then to the top of the dome
• Removing cardboard spaces between bricks
• (optional) Placing wood-burning rack in the oven

Having a replacement brick is a nice addition as these bricks are somewhat brittle and likely to break with mistreatment. They come with a cardboard spacer in between the bricks, and that can be removed or else cooked away with use.

One final note: as should be obvious, use a surface that is able to resist high heat. Our heat gun measured approximately 200°F directly under the oven. So I’d caution against any plastic folding tables like the one in the image above. Actual cooking tests were performed on a different table that can handle high heat.

Accessories

In order to get the most out of your oven, there are a myriad of accessories to complete your cooking experience – some necessary, some recommended, and some just for fun.

The following are some of our recommendations:

• Long pizza peel
• Long pizza turner
• Fire tongs (for placing wood)
• Fire bellows (for starting and stoking fire)
• Thermometer gun
• Ash scraper
• Ash brush with handle
• BBQ gloves

The gloves, long handled pizza peel, long-handled turner, and ash scraper are all necessary, in our opinion. The long handles and gloves are a safety precaution as the oven gets a bit warm. The ash scraper is essential to operate the oven as you need to push the fire (while lit) to the back of the oven. Cru has frequently offered it as a free gift during promotional seasons.

The other items like the infrared thermometer gun just help you better manage the fire and stay agile if you run into situations like the pizza bricks being too hot.

Finally, the fire tongs and bellows are just fun fire tools that will help you manage the fire with more convenience.

Specifications

The following table details the product specifications according to the manufacturer.

Specifications
Fuel Type	Wood or Charcoal
Manufacturer	Cru
Model	Champion
Opening Height	8″ (20.3 cm)
Max Pizza Size	18″ (45.7 cm)
Total Depth	28″ (71.1 cm)
Total Width	27″ (68.5 cm)
Total Height	38″ (96.5 cm)
Weight	146 lbs.
Cooking Surface	576 in² (1463 cm²)
Max Temperature	950°
Portable	No
Grill Accessible	Yes
Removable Top	No
Warranty	3 years
Price	Check Price

Product Evolution

The Cru Champion oven is part of a larger line of wood-fired ovens sold by Cru. Of the 5 ovens available to purchase, it’s actually not even their most expensive.

In the Cru line-up the Champion is directly in the middle as far as price is concerned. However, the Champion could be considered the base-level oven of its type with the two more expensive options, the Cru Pro 90 and Cru Pro 60, offering a similar design with thicker walls and a few more features.

The walls of these more expensive models are 3” of ceramic insulation to the Champion’s 1”, and their weight is appropriately nearly triple as well.

How does Cru Champion Pizza Oven compare?

When compared to the Cru 32 G2 Oven that we tested, the heat retention was the biggest difference in performance. The Cru 32 simply required more attention to ensure its cooking temperature was properly maintained. The Champion hardly required any stoking once the initial fire was allowed to preheat, and it gave more time to focus on cooking.

When compared to the popular Ooni Koda pizza oven, the size was the biggest difference. The Cru Champion could literally fit twice as many pizzas during the same cook. Obviously, the propane fuel of the Koda presents fewer challenges than the wood fire fuel method of the Champion, but it also lacks the signature smoky flavor.

At the end of the day, however, the Ooni Koda and Cru Champion are meant for different occasions. The Koda can whip out a personal pizza for one to two people with as little effort as turning two knobs and waiting 15 minutes to preheat. The Champion is meant to host larger groups, cook 18” pizzas, and provide an overall more artisan experience.

Finally, the Champion is far more versatile in that it can bake bread, grill meats, and slow roast full pots instead of being limited to just pizzas. In the end, the Champion is about as big and high-performance as it can get before entering the professional-grade ovens.

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