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On a recent Friday afternoon, a team of writers huddled in a test kitchen with exposed brick, soft lighting and high ceilings on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
The smell of fresh basil and the sound of clinks from dishes filled the space, a small area decorated with plants, paper lanterns and baking racks piled high with gadgets like espresso machines and pressure cookers.
The group works on the kitchen team at Wirecutter, a New York Times company that reviews products. Wirecutter’s small but dedicated kitchen team is a group of five writers and editors who enter every product testing with meticulous attention to detail and a sense of seriousness, whether it’s a niche product like an expensive pizza oven (that day’s assignment) or essentials, like refrigerators, skillets and chef’s knives.
A great Wirecutter pick, at its core, “exceeds expectations of what a product or category can be,” said Ben Frumin, the site’s editor in chief.
Guides on the service journalism website, which was founded in 2011 by Brian Lam and purchased by The New York Times Company in 2016, typically focus on practical and affordable products that people can adapt easily into their lives. They review smart speakers, coffee makers, running gear and baby strollers. (The site sometimes earns affiliate commissions when readers buy products through recommended links.)
Wirecutter’s kitchen and dining section has published over 140 guides. The team constantly looks for new products to add as updates to its existing stories.
Wirecutter prides itself on the intensive reporting and research that go into its guides and reviews. Some guides take 40 to 60 hours to produce. Because the site serves a wide audience, musings on, for example, the best air purifiers or acoustic guitars for beginners are designed to be easily digestible, but hours of work and critical thinking go into the guides.
“A lot of the time is spent talking through things as the writers are testing,” said Marguerite Preston, the kitchen editor at Wirecutter who oversees and assigns guides. “We have to think about not only what is going to be the top pick, but why is that the top pick?”
The writers said they tested for a broad audience, although men and young adults are the biggest visitors to the site, according to Lesley Stockton, a senior staff writer. Ms. Stockton says she believes the readership expands into other demographics through word-of-mouth.
“Parents and aunts and uncles come to Wirecutter because the younger generation says, ‘Why don’t you just look at Wirecutter for that thing that you need?’ and get swept into it as well,” she said.
After Ms. Stockton tested pizza stones and baking steels — ceramic and steel slabs that trap heat, best for baking pizzas and breads — the team requested the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo, an $800 appliance, to compare the products.
“I’m typically pretty skeptical of appliances that are that expensive,” Ms. Preston said. But the fact that the oven advertised it could reach 750 degrees, when a typical home oven reaches only 500 degrees, intrigued her and Ms. Stockton.
Wirecutter’s team spends weeks discussing the best way to evaluate something, including surveys and real-world use.
To test the Pizzaiolo, Ms. Stockton made a dozen homemade dough balls and let them ferment for two days. She gathered fresh toppings, like Parmesan cheese, olives, basil and anchovies, for the two pizza styles the manual recommended: Neapolitan and New York.
She compared baking the pies using the manual settings with the automatic presets. The pizza cooked within two to seven minutes on both settings. When Ms. Stockton wasn’t satisfied with how the pizzas browned, she cranked up the heat a few notches in the oven.
Ms. Stockton closely examined the Pizzaiolo’s size, practicality and price point. She decided the pizza oven would make an uncomfortable fit for a small New York City apartment, but might be the right choice for people with large kitchens. She noted that it was difficult to clean and that the high price made it unappealing for the average person.
After testing the Pizzaiolo, Ms. Stockton put a pizza in the conventional oven atop a baking stone she tested for a larger guide. Although the stone took longer to preheat than the Pizzaiolo, she recommended it for its affordable price and versatility.
She later made even more pizzas and re-evaluated the oven’s automatic settings, saying the appliance was high-quality, but not for everyone.
Ms. Stockton concluded: “You would have to be a pretty die-hard home pizza hobbyist to want this oven.”
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