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They look great ovens Paul. For me, the simplicity and form factor of the koda 16 made it the preferred choice (plus it was £150+ cheaper!). But if someone wanted the versatility of being able to burn wood or charcoal as well the pro seems a good choice - sometimes a real fire is just more fun. I remain sceptical about the taste difference though, Rotuts. I’ve never eaten at Pepes (though funnily enough I was watching a video about their pizzas just yesterday), but I’ve seen plenty of evidence that the great taste of these high (650-750F a la pepes) and very-high (900+F as in the ooni or a Neapolitan wood oven) heat pizzas comes from temperature alone rather than fuel choice.

agreed, the ease of use of this unit was one of the big selling points for me - connect to gas bottle, turn the ignition and I’m cooking pizza in 20-30 minutes. I’m not even sure there’s that much smoke from a properly lit wood burning pizza oven... isn’t the temp way too hot for that?

Thanks, Scott, that is another amazingly helpful answer. Those links are great too. After following the thread you posted I read your thoughts on when the dough was ready to cook, I think this might have been part of my less than stellar results too. The emergency dough was super light and definitely felt ready to go, the 48 hour stuff only had about 2-3 hours out of the fridge and was a fair bit firmer feeling and less risen pre-shape. I’ll give your recipe a go next time and see where we get to. Thanks again for taking the time, it’s really helpful.

thanks Scott, that’s all really really helpful. My shaping technique is still a work in progress, probably a bit ham fisted right now so I’ll try going a bit more gently. the theory about the long ferment time breaking down the dough seems like it might be right though - despite being just 60% hydration compared to the 64% of the emergency dough, this one felt a lot wetter and stickier when I shaped it. For my next try I think I’ll go back to cuoco and a longer fermentation. Do you have a preferred method at the moment?

So it was a bit of a mixed bag yesterday, the pizzas looked quite good and the dough had a good flavour but I wasn’t really happy with the texture. I cooked six pies in total and, despite experimenting with different heat levels, they all had a bit of an underbaked gumminess to them. Overall they weren’t as good as the quick dough I did earlier in the week. I made too many changes to be 100% sure what impact each made - different flour, lower hydration (60% vs the 64% in the quick dough) and a 48 hour ferment.

🤣 I was very surprised, I’d been looking for one for a while and had become increasingly resigned to not having it this summer. Then an ad on my google search made me check a store again that I’d looked at many times before - they suddenly had just a single unit available. I can only think it was a cancelled order or something. This was about 1am - for once I’m happy about targeted ads and insomnia! that’s really good to know, I’d not seen about the reformulation, what changed with it? Be interesting to see how they turn out this afternoon, do you reckon they’ll be ok with blue?

I was using 1/2” thick steel as in this post and it was decent enough. I got better results when I moved to caputo flour and started using a darto pan on my range top for the base followed by some time under the broiler. Total time for that method was around 30s on the gas burner followed by about 90 under the broiler. They were good pizzas but they were very hit and miss, it was hard to get the balance between base and top just right and my broiler was never quite even enough to do the whole pie without turning. This was probably the best example I did of that method, I really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a patch on what the ooni gave me on its first try: And you’re spot on: the type of pizza I enjoy most and was desperately trying to make is Neapolitan. It’s possible to get somewhere in the ballpark of that with an indoor oven but in truth it’s just never going to be quite right. For flour I’m using caputo at the moment. The ones I made on Tuesday were cuoco, the batch I’ve started ready for tomorrow is made with blue.

You won’t regret it, wish we had your weather! the size is great, I’ve used a roccbox before and it’s much more accommodating. You’d have no problem with any type of pizza or flatbread, naan, etc. Focaccia would be fine too. In terms of non-bread cooking I’d say you could get to some roasted veg in a tray or maybe even a spatchcocked chicken at a push. Thicker than that and you might struggle a bit with proximity to the flames above when trying to cook evenly.

Definite room for improvement - I can get the cooking a little more even, hopefully with better dough the leoparding will be better - but I don’t think I’ve ever been this impressed with a brand new new cooking implement. MostLy, the first few times I try something I can see the potential but it’s a bit underwhelming, this was a big, big surprise. Especially with the “cheat” dough, I’m used to messing about with 24, 48, 72 hour ferments to try and get decent pizza in my indoor oven. Being able to come home from work and decide to make pizza for dinner is a game changer. “proper” dough got started tonight for a Friday cook - I shall report back

Surprised not to have seen more about these ovens on here. I managed to track down some stock (a single unit available) last week and had it delivered yesterday afternoon. I went for the larger 16” version. long story short, after just two pizzas I am blown away. I was going to wait and do them at the weekend but I got impatient so I knocked up an “emergency” dough in an hour or so. It utterly destroyed any pizza I’ve made indoors (pizza stone, pizza steel, modernist recipe, Neapolitan, stove top, cast iron, broiler, yada yada yada). the oven takes 20-30 minutes to get to 450°C in the centre of the stone and cooked my marinaras in around 70 seconds.

thank you 😊 it’s my go to recipe for roast beef from Neil Rankin’s low and slow book. The truth is it’s stupidly easy and almost completely foolproof: Salt the meat a few hours before then get a pan as hot as possible and brown the outside of the roasting joint. Get all of the meat nice and brown but turn it often and spend no more than ten minutes doing it. Fridge cold is best to protect the meat inside. once that’s done it just goes into a 120°C oven until the internal temp gets to where you want it. I pulled this one out at 54°C IIRC. Leave it for 20 minutes to rest and you’re good to go.

Boxing Day good for us involved a roast sirloin of beef and a pain surprise. This latter is a new one for me but something I think I’ll make many more times in the future. Essentially it’s a loaf of bread which is cut like a hassleback potato then stuffed with the following: sautéed mushrooms caramelised onions (done ridiculously slowly a la thomas Keller) slices of baked potato flesh gruyere cheese a savoury custard made with creme fraiche and a couple of eggs with some thyme leaves The whole thing is wrapped in paper and baked for 30 minutes before unwrapping and giving it another 10 minutes to gratinate. It’s delicious, not exactly light, but delicious!

Late update, as predicted the champagne and claret took over 😚 Turned out to be the best goose we’ve had. Cooking the dark meat and breast separately worked very well. It took another 20 minutes or so in a 250°C oven to crisp. Sauce was a Madeira and cassis reduction and got rave reviews. I’ll definitely be making this again next year.

Christmas morning update: To tie in with our turkey better I’ve split the cooking of the legs and the crown into two separate parts. The legs were cooked really nicely after 2.5 hours at 120°C convection. I’ve pulled them out, continued to simmer the stock a little longer then sieved and defatted it. The legs I’ve wrapped in foil and will come back to later. The crown went in at 10am (again on 120°C convection) and took 90 minutes to get up to temp. I was aiming for 54°C as per the Raymond blanc recipe but overshot slightly to 56.6°. The crown is resting now (while our turkey crown continues to cook) and will get a blast at 250°C just before we’re ready to eat. Merry Christmas everyone!

Ours is underway too. So far I’ve broken it down into legs, a crown and some carcass pieces. The carcass has been roasted with some chicken wings, the neck and the gizzard: The legs are now sitting atop the browned carcass, with some bay, thyme and salt. They are set to start cooking at 6am for about 2-2.5 hours at 120°C: The presents are all under the tree so I’m away to bed, hoping I’ve been good this year

I’m picking ours up from the butcher tomorrow morning ahead of our trip back home to stay with family. I’m going to be using this Raymond blanc recipe this year: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/raymonds-roast-goose I’ll report back when champagne and claret allow

I’ve got one of the Breville oracles (branded as Sage here in the UK). I’ve had it for a few years now and it’s been really good. It makes significantly better coffee than previous bean to cup machines I’ve had (gaggia and delonghi) both in terms of the shot itself and the way it froths milk. This latter part is what really sets it apart - the milk is properly steamed with a tiny foam rather than the big uneven bubbles I was used to with the other machines. Two proper boilers too so I can happily make coffee and steam milk simultaneously. It’s more work to make a cup of coffee than those “simpler” bean to cup machines, but it’s significantly less than a fully manual set up. For me it’s the best balance between quality of coffee and effort - ymmv though. I haven’t had any issues with it so far, cleaning is easy and it’s been 100% reliable. It has certainly opened my eyes to better beans as well - the difference with freshly roasted versus the supermarket packs we used to buy is night and day.

I went through a similar process a year or two ago, trying to whittle down choices and find the best material to use. In the end end we went for a sintered stone product called Neolith. It’s a man made stone fabricated in a similar way to Dekton and has the same properties. Its been in for around six six months so far and I’m delighted with it. The main things I like about it are: - total heat resistance, as it’s such a regular structure there are none of the tiny fault lines you get in natural stone or manmade quartz. You can put anything hot on it and not worry. I had a silestone quartz countertop previously and managed to crack that with a pan of just boiled water. - utterly impossible to scratch or stain. We destruction tested scores of samples before picking the material (which was great fun!), I tried a screwdriver tip, keys, even an electric drill and could not make a mark on it. - so far it’s held up very well to being banged with pans. I’ve not managed to chip an edge yet which is in stark contrast to the quartz tops we had before. Its not a cheap cheap product but we found a great fabricator who supplied and installed it for less than the corian quote we’d received.

Cream soda knocks me sick 🤢

Just managed to pick up a mincer attachment for my kitchenaid - normally £85, reduced to £25. I’ve wanted one of these for ages but never quite given in to the desire. Glad I waited now

I’m interested to hear what choice of words people use when sending food back? As a typical uptight British person I can’t help but apologise to the waiter for complaining. Even then I still agonise that they hate me... I agree completely with the idea that we are paying so should expect food to be correct. Also agree that sending stuff back will ruin the meal for me and my companions. Ultimately I guess voting with ones feet in the future is probably as good a response as we can have.

I have to wonder just how much cheese one would need to eat for the sodium content to be an issue... sure cheese tastes quite salty but you're looking at around a pound of parmesan to get your daily allowance of salt. We go through it like there's no tomorrow but a pound still lasts our whole family a good month or so.

My contribution to this thread shall be that from now on I will DEFINITELY check to see if my chicken has a bag of giblets in it before roasting... luckily this bag was paper rather than plastic so didn't melt into the poor bird. I was wondering why it was taking so damn long to come up to temp 😂

I’m no lover of these services either, however in the interests of balance I’ll throw in some thoughts on why they are so successful. As I see it apps like ubereats, deliveroo, etc address two consumer needs: 1. Delivery from places that don’t currently offer the service. Depending on where you live this can be a real limiting factor. 2. The desire to avoid talking to strangers on the phone - like it or not, lots of people prefer an interaction with an app over calling a real person to place an order. Add in the ability to avoid the need for cash and it just removes a lot of friction that people often perceive. Until food places address these these two issues there’ll be a place for for these services. Even then there’ll be an attraction to having a single app for multiple restaurants - were probably tilting at windmills.

It’s only a matter of time...