Ooni pizza oven

[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. 

 

[scott123]

On 6/11/2020 at 1:09 AM, &roid said:

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

 

 

Wait a second.  The first Modernist Cuisine says that, with steel plate, "you can cook a pizza that's as fast and good as any you'll find in Naples." Have you finally proven Nathan wrong?  :)

 

Seriously, I'm happy that you finally found your Neapolitan style pizza bliss, but, without folks like Nathan, Kenji and Andris (bakingsteel.com) telling home pizza makers that they could make Neapolitan pizza on steel, you likely could have reached this goal many years ago.  There's an entire universe sitting between 60-70 second pizza and a 2 minute bake.  Had any of these people actually spoken to Neapolitans, they would have understood this.

 

Congrats on finding an Ooni 16 in stock.  That's not easy to do these days.

If you're going with a 48 hour or longer ferment, I recommend the cuoco, since the pizzeria flour  was reformulated last year and doesn't stand up quite as well to long ferments.

[&roid]

10 minutes ago, scott123 said:

Wait a second.  The first Modernist Cuisine says that, with steel plate, "you can cook a pizza that's as fast and good as any you'll find in Naples." Have you finally proven Nathan wrong? 

🤣

 

11 minutes ago, scott123 said:

Congrats on finding an Ooni 16 in stock.  That's not easy to do these days.

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!

 

16 minutes ago, scott123 said:

If you're going with a 48 hour or longer ferment, I recommend the cuoco, since the pizzeria flour  was reformulated last year and doesn't stand up quite as well to long ferments

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?

[adey73]

3 hours ago, scott123 said:

If you're going with a 48 hour or longer ferment, I recommend the cuoco, since the pizzeria flour  was reformulated last year and doesn't stand up quite as well to long ferments.

 

and what are your thoughts on the new  Nuvola flour from Cupto?

[scott123]

23 hours ago, &roid said:

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?

 

Somewhere around June 2019, Caputo took the pizzeria flour from 12.75% protein:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181024231832/http://caputoflour.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/00-Pizzeria-SPECS.pdf

 

to 12.5%

https://www.mulinocaputo.it/en/flour/la-linea-professionale/pizzeria

 

A drop in .25% may not seem like a great deal, but, because the Neapolitans import so much of their pizza flour from North America, and, since strong North American flour is so expensive, they've always formulated these blends with just enough strength- and no more.  From a perspective of a flour that's always been a bit borderline, a small drop in protein can be meaningful. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that the pizza that you made yesterday turned out fine, but if you really want to play to the blue bag's strengths, I would recommend keeping it to a day or less, and saving the stronger Cuoco for the longer ferments.

[&roid]

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. 
 

 

[scott123]

 

21 hours ago, adey73 said:

 

and what are your thoughts on the new  Nuvola flour from Cupto?

 

My feelings are mixed.  I've seen some puffy crumbs with Nuvola, but also some crumbs that weren't puffy at all.  For me, it's difficult to view Nuvola outside of the greater Caputo lens.  Like many American pizza makers, when I started this journey, I was a pretty rabid Caputo fanboy.  And then, about 10 years ago, I learned that, in Naples, they didn't have the market share, which surprised me.  And then I watched Caputo take over the Pizza Expo in Vegas and, amazingly, make it even crasser.  Combining that with the Americana- attempting to sell Americans their flour back to them at a markup- with the inference that we don't know how to mill good flour for our styles of pizza, the transitional whole wheat Typo 1 (bran is a gluten/volume killer), and the more recent corner cutting with the reformulation- needless to say, my love affair with Caputo has come to a close. 

 

Not that I'd ever to tell anyone to avoid the Cuoco or that the 5 Stagioni Napoletana is inherently superior.  As a company, though, I resonate more with 5 Stagioni- and Pivetti- and I'm also hoping a domestic 00 producer steps up their game.  GM was showing some promise with their Neapolitan, but, then they got greedy and starting jacking up the price. North American flour that hasn't been marked up by the Italians shouldn't be comparably priced.  Ardent Mills came out with an 00 last year.  Perhaps they could be the competition that brings down the price of GM. At the end of the day, I think it's kind of ridiculous to sell wheat to to the Italians and then buy it back again.

 

So... it's not that I'm anti-Nuvola, I just, at this point, don't trust Caputo any more.

[weinoo]

On 6/10/2020 at 10:23 PM, &roid said:

You won’t regret it, wish we had your weather!

Yikes.

 

I'm sure it will be perfect for @Franci, but have you @&roid ever lived in Florida? 

 

I'd take the weather in Manchester over that any day of the year.

[Franci]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

Yikes.

 

I'm sure it will be perfect for @Franci, but have you @&roid ever lived in Florida? 

 

I'd take the weather in Manchester over that any day of the year.

 

Love the weather in Florida! And not this year,  but otherwise I am of the lucky one that can go back to Italy for 2 months in the summer 😁😁😁 Talking flours, @scott123, do you like Polselli, that is another of the most loved flours by the Italian home pizza makers, and it’s easy enough to buy here. 

[scott123]

21 hours ago, &roid said:

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. 

 

FWIW, that white pie has one of the prettiest Neapolitan crusts that I've ever seen on this forum. 

I had a sense that the pizzeria flour @ 48 hours wouldn't be as wonderful as your emergency dough, but the gumminess is throwing me for a bit of a loop.

 

How are you stretching these? Are you using the slap technique?  If you are, how aggressively are you slapping?  The reason I bring this up is that slapping with a heavy hand tends to promote gumminess.  It's so closely associated, the second I hear 'gummy' my mind goes to the slap. Basically, aggressive slapping compresses the dough and makes it harder for heat to penetrate.

 

It might just be as simple as 48 hours breaking a (relatively) weak dough down, which, in turn, freed up water, with a wetter dough resulting, with a similar amount of heat/bake time as your last bake- resulting in a wetter crumb. Was the dough overly sticky and/or slack?

 

What bake times did you play around with?  Did you go as long as 90 seconds?

 

Visually, I'm not going to lie, this doesn't really look like a dough that's too far past it's prime.  On the last pie, those blisters that you're seeing at 8:30pm, in Naples, those are generally considered to reveal overproofing, with smaller, more freckled leoparding being the goal. Considerable numbers of home pizza makers are happy as a clam with that kind of blistering.  All the same, if you keep the pizzeria flour to 24 hours or less, you be less likely to see those.