Summer is approaching, which means it’s time to enjoy some gloriously warm weather beside the grill. But let me pitch you on an alternative: Instead of the usual burgers, hot dogs, and kebabs, what if you made pizza? I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and while I still love to grill, it no longer compares to pulling pies from my Ooni Fyra 12.
A pizza oven previously seemed to me like something reserved for staunch enthusiasts. I never would have considered buying one myself, because for many years I believed that I hated pizza — the British food landscape wasn’t exactly rife with good options during my childhood, in my defense. But after my partner and I were gifted one a few years ago, I’ve spent some time making my own, and I have to admit I’m a total convert.
The Ooni Fyra 12 retailed for $349 in the US at launch, but you can no longer buy this specific model on Ooni’s US website. It uses wood pellets for fuel, which gives the pizza an authentic wood-fired taste, so a comparable alternative would be something like the $200 12-inch oven from Big Horn Outdoors. Otherwise, the spiritual successor of the Fyra seems to be the Ooni Karu, which sells for the same $349 but uses either wood logs or charcoal.
While the actual fueling process can vary between pizza oven models, the cooking process and speed should be similar. I found the Fyra to be very simple to assemble, only requiring you to attach some included chimney pipes and flame guards, and it comes with clear use instructions. The Karu is visually very similar to the Fyra, and the setup process is just as simple — the only real difference is that you’d be shoving wood or charcoal into the rear fuel compartment instead of specialized wood pellets.
As its name suggests, the Fyra 12 is designed to make 12-inch pizzas. It came with a square pizza stone that works just fine, but you can also use alternative 12-inch pizza stones and steels if you prefer. It also came with an Ooni-branded pizza peel (the big paddle you use to move the pizza around), but this felt poor-quality compared to the brandless version I’ve used for years at my in-laws’ place, so I’d recommend investing in a better one. The metal of the one supplied with the oven is flimsy, and the plastic handle isn’t pleasant to, well, handle.
But man, the cooking experience? Unrivaled. On a recent weekend, I had my partner set up the Ooni because I didn’t want to get my hands dirty before handling food, and the whole process from assembly to consuming two fresh, hot pizzas took less than 40 minutes. It took around 15 minutes to preheat the oven by filling its fuel hopper to the top with wood pellets, and then around four minutes to bake the pie to perfection. All you have to do during that process is intermittently use a peel to turn the pizza every minute or so. If you have the raw pizzas preassembled or a second person making them ready to throw in, you can make a lot of food very quickly. I’m confident that I could comfortably use this to feed a group of six adults.
The oven is great; my pizza skills are not. Photo by Jess Weatherbed / The Verge
Provided you don’t stick a pizza in and forget about it, the results will more likely depend on the quality of your pizza-making skills than baking skills — something that you can easily get around by buying premade dough and sauces, or just putting in a bit of practice. But even a mediocre pizza can be elevated by cooking it with real flame, and it personally only took me two attempts to get comfortable with making pizza from scratch. It’s a bit like making a pancake: They can smell fear The process is actually pretty simple, but your first one will probably suck.
If you don’t want to make a ton of pizza, then you’ll be pleased to know the oven cools down very quickly, so it’s still worth the effort to set up even for just a single pie. My pellet-burning model burnt through its fuel in around 45 minutes, and it was cool enough to move around by hand around an hour later. I also find the oven to be much easier to clean than a barbecue by comparison because there’s little grease involved. The stone can be washed if needed, and I just wipe down any soot inside the oven’s chimneys if I notice it’s building up — usually after two uses.
The oven is quite portable, too. Its legs collapse, so you can chuck all the components into a bag and carry it to a picnic or barbecue destination. It also doesn’t get so hot that you can’t set it up on a wooden table (we have on several occasions without a blemish to the table itself), which is good because bending over to spin pizzas around when the Ooni is on the ground is a quick way to strain your back. I’d only caution that you shouldn’t place the oven with its back against anything. When you open the front grill and chimney vent, the extra airflow makes fire shoot out of its rear vent, so leave plenty of space.
For me, if the sun is shining and we want to cook outside, this will win over a barbecue almost every time. It’s quick to set up, bakes fast, requires minimal cleaning, and gives you restaurant-quality pizza that’s far better than something you can cook in your regular oven. Having that authentic char on the crusts is something I’ve only achieved by cooking with real flame. This realization has spread through most of our extended family, who have now started to acquire their own portable pizza ovens to take on camping trips, to beach outings, and to garden parties.
And now I implore you, too: Get the dang pizza oven. You don’t even have to love pizza — with this, you’ll learn to.
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