Ooni Pizza Oven

[andiesenji]

Staff note: Please see this link, https://ooni.com/blogs/news/uuni-becomes-ooni-faq, for the company's change in name from Uuni to Ooni.

 

I have subscribed to The Grommet for some time and have been intrigued by some of the things they offer.

However, this is really interesting - in spite of being made in China and I really don't like to buy things made there - I wish I was ten years younger and with the energy to take advantage of it.

 

The Uuni Wood Fired Pizza Oven is only $299.00 and compact enough to fit in even fairly small patio areas - as long as it is far enough from the house AND has an efficient spark arrestor on the chimney.

[Paul Fink]

FWIW

It seems pretty flimsy to me. Looks made with pretty light weight sheet metal.

[Lisa Shock]

I think I'd prefer one of those inserts for a Weber grill instead.

[palo]

Serious Eats has seriously reviewed some outdoor pizza ovens:

 

http://www.seriouseats.com/2017/05/best-backyard-pizza-ovens-review.html

 

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[Lisa Shock]

Ok, so the inserts don't work very well.

 

The one takeaway message I get from the article is that there's still a lot of room in the market for innovation. That, and maybe building a permanent oven with bricks, etc. might not be such a bad idea...

[andiesenji]

A permanent, brick oven is ideal but very expensive, even with the "kits" - I saw one priced around 995. but you had to buy the bricks and mortar.

[paulraphael]

A big wood-fired oven is great, but keep in mind that it takes a lot of wood—and attendant deforestation and pollution—to preheat the thing. It's hard to justify them unless you plan to make a lot of pies every time you fire it up. I'd imagine that the bigger and heavier the oven, the greater the minimum fuel requirements for each cook.

[Lisa Shock]

4 hours ago, paulraphael said:

A big wood-fired oven is great, but keep in mind that it takes a lot of wood—and attendant deforestation and pollution—to preheat the thing. It's hard to justify them unless you plan to make a lot of pies every time you fire it up. I'd imagine that the bigger and heavier the oven, the greater the minimum fuel requirements for each cook.

 

Yeah, that's why I had been holding onto hope for the grill inserts

[andiesenji]

That's why I quit using mine in my old house.  And it took hours and hours to heat up and was a killer during the summer, even with the extra AC in the kitchen. (Expensive too)

 

Edited May 26, 2017 by andiesenji (log)

[gfweb]

https://ooni.com/products/ooni-koda?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=48-us-koda-lal&fbclid=IwAR0l4oPr2o8zC4iHAAczyPxc_CNVcdqi76BU_F6ZHO-lHrJy0Wb5egtbp8A

 

About $300, gas powered, reaches 932F, cooks a pizza in a minute. Higher priced models do it with wood.

 

Any eG experience with it?

[Okanagancook]

I don't personally but I think my nephew's friend has one and they really love it.  I will email him to get more details.

Edited April 16, 2019 by Okanagancook (log)

[Okanagancook]

And through the wonders of the internet, I give you his response, he's a good lad:

 

"My friend has an earlier version, so the newer ones might have some differences (probably for the better). His is good, and i'd definitely recommend it. It's pretty much a proper wood-fired pizza oven but is portable. Cooks pizzas in 1-2 minutes, making a nice crust on top and on the bottom. The fire at the back passes right over the pizza to get to the chimney at the front, so the tops get cooked very well. There is a learning curve though, so you can expect to burn parts of your pizza from time to time as you learn (or not cook it as well if you fail to keep the temperature up). The pellets are at the back, so you need to take the pizza out as you're cooking and turn it to cook it evenly. The metal peels can get sticky if you don't use enough flour, but when you use enough, the flour transfers to the uuni and burns between pizzas (so you need to figure out a way around that). The one he has is a little small, which isn't a huge problem (and i think the newer ones are bigger), but it limits the pizzas to 7-8 inches. So yeah, it needs close attention as you cook it, but still a great little toy. "

 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Okanagancook (log)

[gfweb]

I was afraid that it was a good thing.

 

$300 and a tank of propane........

 

Hmmm.

[gfweb]

I’m sure it’ll cook a steak too.....

[gfweb]

May be the next Char Broil Big Easy fryer!

[scott123]

The Koda is a very hot oven right now (no pun intended).  I know at least 20 people who have pulled the trigger.

 

With these types of ovens, early adoption is generally not a good idea- and it's an especially poor idea with a company like Ooni, who, for years, until they got their act together, were selling what were basically door stops to unsuspecting beta testers.  They eventually got it right with the Ooni 3, but versions 1 and 2 should never have been sold to the public.

 

I'm not necessarily saying that the Koda is half baked, but until it's in the hands of someone who knows how to make pizza, and we can clearly see what it's capable of dong, my advice would be to wait.  With these types of ovens, there's usually longevity concerns, but Ooni, so far, hasn't had problems with that.

 

Normally it takes about a year before we know how well an oven truly performs, but, there's so much interest here, we might see results as quickly as 6 months.

 

For those interested, here's further information on the leading sub $1k outdoor pizza ovens, along with a spreadsheet containing their perspective specs.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/avglku/is_there_actually_a_taste_difference_in_woodfired/ehfv6yr/

Edited April 17, 2019 by scott123 (log)

[&roid]

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. 
 

 

[KennethT]

Wow @&roid... that is pretty impressive!

[&roid]

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

[Franci]

I think we are going to move to a house with a backyard before the end of the summer, which for me, living in Florida is not going to be a problem. This is already on the shopping list! I know @&roid with the smaller oven people were saying there was not much room to cook bigger items. Do you think with the bigger versions breads or pala style pizza is no issue? 

[&roid]

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. 

[scott123]

9 hours ago, &roid said:

It utterly destroyed any pizza I’ve made indoors (pizza stone, pizza steel, modernist recipe, Neapolitan, stove top, cast iron, broiler, yada yada yada). 

 

 

If you're working with a typical 250Cish British oven and what I'm guessing is most likely thin steel, then yes, the Koda 16 will annihilate it.  But that doesn't mean that life altering pizza in a home oven isn't possible.  A home oven can't make 1 minute Neapolitan pizza, which, for those seeking that milestone, the Koda is a must have.  But that's not everyone.

 

What flour are you using?

[scott123]

1 hour ago, Franci said:

I think we are going to move to a house with a backyard before the end of the summer, which for me, living in Florida is not going to be a problem. This is already on the shopping list! I know @&roid with the smaller oven people were saying there was not much room to cook bigger items. Do you think with the bigger versions breads or pala style pizza is no issue? 

 

Should you decide to pull the trigger on this oven, I wouldn't wait too long, as availability keeps getting pushed further and further into the future.  Presently, the best domestic shipping date you'll find is the end of July.

 

https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/ooni-koda-16-pizza-oven/

 

With your potential move, the present timing might work for you, but, if you wait too long, you may very well see a very long delay.  For the last month or so, for every week that passes, availability tends to get pushed two weeks.  With the growing popularity of this oven, I expect pre-orders to snowball even more aggressively. In addition, Ooni has not been shy in the past about raising prices to reflect increasing demand.  I'm confident that, within a month, the price will go up.

 

This oven has an opening about 4" tall.  Although, technically, this allows a wide variety of breads, you wouldn't want to use this for anything thicker than flatbread, as taller breads need steady, even, low heat, something this oven can't do.  This device has a 16" square cooking surface.  I wouldn't take Pala all the way to the walls, but you could probably do a 15" square pala pie comfortably.

[Franci]

Thank you @scott123 , very helpful!  We just started looking for houses, as soon as I see progress on that front, I will buy it. 

[&roid]

1 hour ago, scott123 said:

 

If you're working with a typical 250Cish British oven and what I'm guessing is most likely thin steel, then yes, the Koda 16 will annihilate it.  But that doesn't mean that life altering pizza in a home oven isn't possible.  A home oven can't make 1 minute Neapolitan pizza, which, for those seeking that milestone, the Koda is a must have.  But that's not everyone.

 

What flour are you using?

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.