Table of Content
The oven comes mostly assembled, but you have to place the included battery in the digital display, and then a short burn-in is required before first use. When it’s time to move or store, the legs fold down for a smaller footprint, and it's lightweight enough to move easily. Ooni offers a three-year warranty if you purchase directly from its site. "The pizza puffed nicely and came out with great char and a crispy crust. The cheese was nicely melted." Going beyond pizza, our home tester used it to cook whole fish, steak, lamb chops, pineapple, tomatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, beets, and other veggies and was happy with all of the results.
They also evaluated maintenance and portability to assess whether these appliances truly should earn a spot at your home. In Lab testing, it took 45 minutes to reach max temperature, so you will want to plan ahead with this model. Because the oven is so big, you can play around with where you place your pie depending on how close to the heat you want it. After 45 minutes, it was 750 degrees at the back of the oven, 720 in the front, 900 on the left side, and 700 on the right. Thankfully, the Dome's sizable opening also makes it easy to rotate the pizza for even doneness.
Related Reviews
However, it doesn't stay hot for long, as it burns through fuel pellets rather quickly, requiring users to refuel more often than many of the other ovens on our list. Still, its portability and easy-to-store format make it a great budget option for most, and it's one of the cheapest ways to get that wood-fired taste at home. Our tester loves using the Koda 12 to make pizzas on a weeknight, mainly because he can churn out about four pies in an hour, making light work out of what one might assume is a long and tedious job .
The final cost of the wood fired oven will depend on the size and materials used. Pizza ovens are quite expensive, in part, because they have to be made from materials that can withstand extreme heat. Also, the design has to be very carefully considered to ensure proper cooking of the pizza. A traditional wood fired oven is made from bricks, clay, and stone. As for achieving pizza that tastes just as good as restaurant-quality and even better than delivery, Uditi recommends the Gozney Dome, hands down.
Other pizza ovens I tested
We’ve tested every single one of them, and the Karu 16 is the best pizza oven Ooni offers. It’s also the only home pizza oven to have the distinction of being "Recommended for Domestic Use" by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the world’s foremost authority on Neapolitan pies. So if you’re looking to make Neapolitan-style pizza specifically, the Karu 16 is pretty tough to beat. But even if you have no interest in producing specific genres of pizza, the Karu 16 is still an excellent choice for beginners, according to our tester, thanks to how easy it is to use.
The built-in temperature gauge monitors the air temperature, so your crust stays crispy, not burnt, while your cheese melts into a nice, gooey texture that will rival slices in cartoons. Before considering anything else, you should decide whether your pizza oven is for outdoor or indoor use. If you don't have a balcony, yard, or other outdoor space to put it, you won't be able to use any of the gas- or wood-powered ovens above. There are indoor pizza ovens that can achieve appropriately high temperatures and make great crusty pizza, however, and they're a lot more convenient to use when it's raining or snowing. Indoor ovens typically accommodate somewhat smaller pizzas than outdoor ones, and they take up a moderate amount of counter space while in use.
Ooni
But to make sure you get your money’s worth, you’ll need to know what to look for. Another factor to consider is whether you’d prefer an indoor or outdoor pizza oven. The thought of being able to enjoy a hot, fresh white pizza rain or shine may seem appetizing. But if something sounds too good to be true, it often is—as is the case with indoor home pizza ovens, which often aren’t worth it unless you shell out some serious cash. This Good Housekeeping 2021 Kitchen Gear Award winner produced impressive results in testing.
Whilst you won't be able to cook with gas and wood at the same time, we feel the two fuel-types are ideal for different situations. Cook with gas when you're entertaining and want to churn out consistently tasty pizzas for a crowd. For chilled out evenings with your nearest and dearest, use wood and take your time. The finished pizza is restaurant-grade, even if you are new to the art of dough-slinging.
After 5 minutes of baking, check the pizza.
ETL CERTIFIED QUALITY - Safety ensured for your every-time cookout! Body insulation design reduces skin burn and overheat protection device ensures 100% SAFE cooking. It's never too early to start gearing up for outdoor cooking season. Heating elements are separately controlled, allowing you to select top, bottom, or both elements for perfect results every time. You can turn your gas grill into a lean, mean, pizza-making machine too with the BakerStone Basics Series Grill Top Pizza Oven Box Kit.
This pizza-stone-lined baking box turns most gas grills with three or more burners into an outdoor pizza oven. Crank all your grill burners to high and set the box on top to preheat for about 20 minutes. Depending on your grill’s power and the weather conditions, the oven can reach 600˚to 800˚F, making your cook time just two to four minutes. The oven has built-in handles for easy transport and it has a temperature gauge so you can decide when to start baking.
This pizza steel will work well to distribute heat and prevent soggy-bottomed pies or delicious bagels. This steel comes pre-seasoned, so you can use it in the oven right after unboxing it. We recommend seasoning it a couple of times a year, or whenever the steel starts to look and feel dry. For the beginner at-home pizzaiolo, this essentials kit is a great introductory set if you’d like to start making your own pizzas at home.
The purpose of a pizza oven is to get to the high temperatures that you can't achieve in a typical home oven. Our testers made note of how hot their pizza ovens could get — getting as high as almost 1,000 degrees — and then they got to actually making pizzas. Testers made note of how easy it was to make a pizza, as well as how well those pizzas turned out. And in pretty much every case, every single one of these pizza ovens pumped out some pretty enviable pies. If you're looking to bring your pizza oven on the go, you can, especially when most of the ones available can be broken down and reassembled with ease.
Some weigh as little as 25 pounds, while others top the scale at over 50 pounds. Larger, non-portable ovens are too heavy to move around regularly, and some are designed to hook up to your home gas line, making them essentially immobile. Almost all small- and medium-sized pizza ovens on the market today have a streamlined contemporary look with a stainless steel finish and interior pizza stone baking surface. Some models come in black or gray instead of silver, but most do not have a variety of color options.
