Ooni Pizza Oven – cooked in 60 seconds – really! (kitchen review)

When Ooni said an Ooni Pizza oven could cook a Neapolitan style Pizza in 60 seconds, the budding chef in me said, ‘Bring it on’. Well, Ooni was right, and the results were superb – Bellissima.

Little did Ooni know that in the 70s, I was a training manager for Pizza Hut and have made many thousands of pizzas and trained hundreds of pizza makers in the fine art. So, this review is about sharing some pizza secrets and how to use the Ooni Pizza oven – of which there are several models.

Types of Pizza

Supermarket-bought pizza – meh!

These use ingredients that can cook at 220-250°C – about as hot as a domestic oven gets.

• A thin base needs 10-12 minutes of cooking at 250° (as hot as you can get the oven)
• A thicker base needs 12-15 minutes of cooking at 220°C.
• A stuffed crust pizza needs 15-20 minutes of cooking at 180°C.
• An over-loaded pizza – one you have added extra cheese and more ingredients needs a lower temperature of 180°C and 20-25 minutes of cooking.

The issue is that you don’t want to burn the base while cooking the ingredients. You can buy a Pizza stone to place in the oven, but its maximum temperature is the same as the oven, and it does nothing for supermarket pizza.

Dominos et al – US style pizza

Their ovens are fan-forced conveyor belts that cook at 450-475°C for between 4 and 7 minutes. As they cook pizza in a metal pan – not on stone – on a conveyor belt, the ovens have dual heat zones from the top and bottom to simultaneously crisp the base and cook the top.

Dominos pizzas have a consistent 6mm thickness, ingredients that don’t burn so quickly and portion-controlled toppings distributed to form as few layers as possible (every layer increases cooking time).

Pizza restaurants – good ones use a Wood-fired oven

Two things make a great pizza – a stone base to cook on and hardwood that has turned to coals. These reach 450-500°C, although many cook at 350-450° to reduce the incidence of burning the pizza dough base. The wood, usually Oak here but Beech in Italy, burns cleanly without much soot and imparts a subtle flavour to the pizza.

Wood-fired ovens have a constant heat-retentive stone base, so a good pizza chef instinctively knows how hot the oven is and can gauge the correct cooking time – believe it or not, from 60-90 seconds.

Genuine Neapolitan pizza

What is a Neapolitan pizza? It is simple with

• Water, salt, yeast and 00 flour for a 3mm thin crust,
• Low-acid San Marzano tomato pizza sauce
• Mozzarella cheese
• A few thinly sliced ingredients like pepperoni or prosciutto ham, a smattering of olives, mushrooms, herbs, basil and no more than two layers.

Australian Review: Enter Ooni Pizza Ovens

Ooni is about quickly cooking a 12-16” (depending on the oven model) Neapolitan-style pizza.

Website	AU home page Range comparison page Review product page
Price	$549 for Karu 12 Multi-fuel $189 for the Gas kit (plus LCC27 compatible gas bottle)
Warranty	3-year ACL
Country of manufacture	Designed in Scotland and made in China
Company	Ooni was founded by a husband-and-wife team, Kristian Tapaninaho and Darina Garland, in Scotland with offices in Europe, US and Australia.
More	CyberShack cooking appliance news and reviews

We use Fail (below expectations), Pass (meets expectations) and Exceed (surpasses expectations or is the class leader) against many of the items below. We occasionally give a Pass(able) rating that is not as good as it should be and a Pass ‘+’ rating to show it is good but does not quite make it to Exceed.

You can click on most images for an enlargement.

The heat source – Exceed

Ooni offers models using hardwood/charcoal and/or Australian propane gas (LPG). Our review unit was a $695 multi-fuel Ooni Karu 12, and we opted for the $139.99 LGP gas option. Why? We are probably too lazy to use wood, and, in my experience, gas is faster to heat and easier to regulate temperature. We will try the wood fuel option later.

The gas option is excellent, and it comes down to the oven’s design and construction. It bolts to the rear of the oven, and you remove the wood tray/grate and chimney and cook with an open front. The gas comes with the new LCC27 fitting (mandatory from August 2022), so your old LPG tank with a POL fitting will not work. Just go to a gas exchange and swap the bottle for a new model which fits both the old and new fittings.

It cost us $83 to buy a 3.7kg LC227 filled gas bottle at Ampol, and in future, a full swap bottle costs $15.

Setup – Ooni Karu 12 multi-fuel – Exceed

It comes in one carton and includes the main body, insulated front door, baking stone, fuel hatch/tray/grate and chimney/cap. There is no complex assembly required – slip it all together. It has three-fold out legs to lift the unit off the ground.

It is well made from well-insulated, solid 430-grade stainless steel and stainless-steel components.

With wood, you use the front door and adjustable air vent/chimney to control the temperature. With gas, you take off the chimney, place the cap chimney hole and remove the front door.

500° – Exceed

Ooni aims for 450-500°C (850-900°F) cooking temperature. Gas takes about 15 minutes to pre-heat – longer with wood and a little harder to keep it at a consistent temperature. You can adjust the internal temperature by varying the gas flow from about 250° and monitoring it with the $76 Ooni Infrared thermometer – a must-buy accessory and invaluable if you want to cook other foods.

We have not used wood, but our experience is that it is far harder to get to and maintain the temperature you want.

Results – Exceed

I know pizza and the pitfalls of overloading. For our first attempt, we used supermarket ingredients.

Woolworths has a two-pack 12” x 100g thin-crust base (300 calories), and these are OK but use some sugar and burn quickly. Its pizza base range includes Italian Classic, Turkish, Low-carb/high protein, Gluten-free, Cauliflower, flavoured (herb, garlic, chilli) and 200g TuPizza Dough enough for two hand-stretched 12” bases.

The sauce can be from simple Woolworth’s Passata ($2 for 700g) to a variety of pre-packaged sauces with onion, herbs, and garlic.

Cheese can range from $5 Woolworths shredded Mozzarella (don’t use too much) to fresh cow’s, or Buffalo milk mozzarella, or Bocconcini balls thinly sliced.

The results were superb. One piece of advice – use a timer, as 60 seconds is no joke. The base is beautifully brown, the mozzarella and bocconcini are melted and browned, and the ingredients (pepperoni, olives, sun-dried tomatoes) are cooked. Our edges were a tad burnt – yes, 60 seconds is enough.

Other use – not yet tested

Ooni has a cast iron skillet that it says is perfect for steak, chicken, fish,  etc. Here temperature control is vital. You can also bake tostadas, quesadilla, roti, and naan flat breads.

LPG Use – Pass+

Before its first use, you must season it with a full power burn for 30 minutes. Ooni says it consumes about .34kg/hr and tallies with the cylinder weight. You will get 11-12 hours of use – 15-minute pre-heat and 60 seconds per pizza.

Maintenance – Exceed (update)

The unit weighs 12kg, and while you can leave it outside, it is easy to move back to storage. A quick wipe over the upper ‘lip’ to remove some carbon and a dry rag on the stone is all.

However, on one attempt using fresh dough (not prebought bases), it stuck to the stone base, and nothing we could do would remove it as it went from Pizza to charred remains. The aluminium paddle helped to push the remains to the rear below the gas burner so we could continue to use the oven.

The next day I used a Karcher pressure washer on the stone, and the entire oven (with the gas burner removed), and that worked well cleaning the oven (it is all stainless steel, so it is fine to pressure wash) and the stone.

Tech – Exceed

I have used several pizza ovens, but most are either too expensive or left wanting in even heat distribution or fuel sources. None reached the desired temperature topping out at 350-400°

Ooni has nailed it – the design is well-thought-out, very well-made, has a multi-fuel option, and the heat is fairly even from the stone and overhead. And it reaches 450-500° as promised. The only caveat is that you should rotate the pizza at 30 seconds as the back temperature near the gas is slightly higher than the front.

If you make a bad or burnt pizza, it is probably because you have over-loaded the toppings or sauce, the dough base is not uniform thickness, or you have overcooked it. Don’t blame the tools.

CyberShack’s view – if you love pizza, then the Ooni pizza oven is for you.

Everyone loves pizza, so why not have a genuine pizza oven? That is where an Ooni pizza oven comes in, although you will have to eat a lot of pizza to justify it.

If you want to know, the typical store-bought 12-inch pizza is about 10,000kj (2,500 calories), and adults need about 2,000 calories daily. A homemade Margarita pizza is almost half that.

I won’t do the economics but let’s say that a decent 12” Neapolitan from a pizza restaurant costs well north of $20. No, I am not talking about Dominos.

My rough cost of store-bought ingredients (base, sauce, cheese, toppings) is well under $5 each, so let’s assume a $15 saving at least. I could have saved even more by making my dough and sauce.

My kit (oven, thermometer, Pizza peel and gas upgrade) cost <$1000, so I can earn the investment back in around 50-60 pizzas. Yes, it is worth it.

There are a few lessons to learn:

• Less is more – thin with just a few layers
• Thinly slice toppings, and don’t overload
• Uniform dough thin base thickness
• Cheese is important – Mozzarella is about 17g of fat per 100g (so it does not burn as fast) compared to ‘pizza mix’ at around 30g of fat and is higher in sugar and salt, so it burns faster. Parmesan has 29g of fat, but you should use that sparingly.
• Fast – 450-500° heat makes a better pizza in just 60 seconds, provided you turn it at least once

I make good pizza, and Ooni helps to make even better ones that rival restaurant pizza