2 weeks Ago By Adrienne So
Best Overall If you've heard of Solo Stove, it's because of its smokeless, stainless steel fire pits . This makes the company's transition to high-heat pizza ovens more or less seamless. Instead of the conventional elongated design, the Pi Prime oven's fuel attachments are long and slim and hug the back of the oven.
This allows Solo Stove to keep its signature round, symmetrical design. This really is a great design. The oven is remarkably compact, and the opening quite small.
The cooking surface is large enough to accommodate my biggest Lodge cast-iron pan , but I can leave the handle sticking out—a boon to anyone who has ever burned their hands through heat-resistant gloves. If you have a small backyard, the top's flat surface is a convenient storage space, and the stove doesn't sacrifice any of its heating capabilities for these details. I do miss being able to cook with wood, however.
A Great Multi-Fuel Oven Note: Ooni recently released an update, the Karu 2 , that we will be testing shortly. Ooni makes pizza ovens in a variety of sizes and styles, but its Karu 16 ( 9/10, WIRED Recommends ) is the most versatile and easy-to-use oven I've tried. You can buy a separate gas attachment , but it's designed to be used with charcoal or wood.
Lighting the oven is fast and easy—simply drop a lit fire starter and a few oak sticks on the fuel tray and it'll get hot within 10 minutes. Unlike previous iterations, the Karu 16 has a door that hooks closed to retain heat and an integrated digital thermometer to measure the temperature. Like all of Ooni's ovens, the Karu is attractive, light, portable, and easy to clean.
You have to constantly add fuel to maintain the temperature, but not any more so than other ovens I've tried. The best indicator that it's a great pizza oven? I can't stop using it, and everyone who has seen me use it wants one too. Best for Beginners Does fiddling about with attachments, chimneys, and griddles sound stressful and off-putting? This is another one from Ooni that might be for you ( 8/10, WIRED Recommends ).
At around 21 pounds, the Koda is light and portable. The thin, powder-coated steel shell insulates well enough that it remains cool to the touch, even when the fire is burning. Just slide in the baking stone, screw on the propane tank, and you're ready to go.
The door fits 12-inch pizza peels and 10-inch cast-iron skillets. However, unlike the Pro, you should not store it outside. Most Versatile Oven Our previous pick, the Ninja Outdoor Oven , has lasted well over a year.
However, the Gourmia All-in-One has a few advantages that the Ninja doesn't. First, it's much cheaper than the Ninja. It has a glass door, so you can see what's happening inside your oven—a necessary quality when baking a pizza takes only a few minutes—and also provides a fun dash of theater to the process.
Third, it has individual control over the top and bottom heating elements, so you can adjust if your cheese isn't melty enough or your bottom not quite cooked. Reviewer Matthew Korfhage found that his pies came out lovely, with a leopard-spotted bottom, a bubbly cheese topping, and a lovely puffy crust. It does require a bit of patience—the heating can be wonky and uneven, and there's an awful lot of heat loss that comes from a lack of insulation.
That means using it as an air fryer or as a conventional baking oven is a bit of a crapshoot. Using it as a conventional baking oven is doable, but he wasn't able to achieve truly crispy wings (a tragedy!). Consider this your gateway oven—an affordable entry point until you decide that you love pizza enough to finally ball out and get an Ooni.
Best Live Fire Pizza Oven I've been dreaming of building a backyard firepit for decades, having been inspired by my late father's stories of taking his mom's pies down to bake in the neighborhood’s community pizza ovens . I've owned three Ooni ovens (one as an Uuni ) but always wanted to cook on live fire instead of pellets or gas. The Breeo finally made that dream come true.
The base Breeo is a heavy-duty competitor to the better-known Solo Stove fire pit . I love the stylish Corten steel, which I treated to speed the weathering process, but what really separates it is the assortment of available accessories, headlined by a well-designed pizza oven that sits on top and turns the pit into a wood-fired pizza oven. I've made about a dozen pies on the Breeo and had mostly good results, though it is important to read the temperature of the deck and spritz it with water if it has gotten too hot, as real logs will reach temps little wood pellets won't.
Master the quirks (all backyard pizza ovens have quirks) and you'll be rewarded with quick cooks and true char. I've even gotten legit leopard spots a few times. —Martin Cizmar Best Electric Oven Our previous pick in this category was the Breville Pizzaiolo , but aside from the fact that it's slightly smaller to fit on a countertop, Ooni's first electric oven ( 8/10, WIRED Recommends ) has objectively better specs.
The door is triple-paned glass, while the Pizzaiolo's is double-pane; it gets to 850 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 750. The main difference is philosophical. With the Pizzaiolo, you can put on a setting and walk away.
Even though the Volt has dials that let you shift the source of the heat, it requires you to keep an eye on your quick-cooking crust. It also takes a lot of electrical energy to keep an oven this hot; every time I opened the door, the temperature dropped by about 50 degrees. That said, if you want a safe, convenient, and compact oven that can work equally well indoors and outdoors without having to refill a propane tank or buy wood, this is your best bet.
Best “Portable” Oven Let's be clear—almost every one of these ovens could be considered portable. In fact, I have transported the Koda to Airbnbs and friends' houses, and put the Karu on a paddleboard across the lake. A more accurate characterization of Gozney's Tread might be that it technically has the smallest dimensions, even if it's not lighter than some of our other picks.
It also has a wide variety of great accessories that make it easy to bake pizzas outdoors. Reviewer Chris Haslam found that it was an absolutely beautiful oven with plenty of insulation that helped it maintain an even and consistent internal temperature, even at 900 degrees. Most importantly when traveling with an extremely hot oven, you can buy a very well-engineered Venture Stand ($249) , which has four telescoping legs so you can position it outside securely, in almost any place that's even vaguely level.
If you want to impress your cohorts at your next tailgate or overlanding trip , you will seriously want to consider this oven. The Best Oven for Families Ooni's latest oven is for everyone who is sick of feeding their families with multiple teeny-tiny 12-inch pies and just wants to make a massive cheese pizza for all the kids at once. You can either attach a propane tank or hook it to your natural gas line.
If this is a possibility for you, then I recommend the latter. Ooni has a new gas management technology that keeps the temperature consistent across the huge surface. However, it's a lot of gas line and a lot of fuel.
Even just waiting for the propane to fill so I could light the oven took a really long time. With such a big opening and no door, heat pours out of this thing. You can feel it from several feet away, which means it's not ideal for smaller patios.
However, the temperatures are remarkably consistent across the cooking surface, and the new digital temperature hub checks the heat at multiple points throughout the oven. You can even connect it to Ooni's new app ( iOS , Android ) to monitor the heat remotely, although I get a little nervous stepping away from an oven that is burning at 900 degrees Fahrenheit. You can control each side independently, so you can either cook multiple pizzas at a time or just push some broccoli in next to your steak.
The price includes two food probes, but oddly enough no pizza peel. The Viral Pizza Oven This is a little countertop oven that is currently making the rounds on TikTok . When I set it on the counter, my daughter asked if we were making waffles for dinner , as you open the top to put the pizza in.
(It also comes with handy double paddles for easier placement.) Astonishingly, its claims of heating the top and bottom elements to 800 degrees Fahrenheit are accurate, and it takes about 15 minutes. The cooking surface is 12 inches wide, and it's removable with handles for easy washing.
A few cons—the heating element at the top doesn't cover the whole surface area, so you have to rotate your pies pretty frequently. Also, opening the top like a waffle maker means that it doesn't retain heat very well. It dropped by 100 to 200 degrees between pies and requires a bit of recovery time.
However, it is affordable, small, and convenient and would be a nicer gift for a pizza-loving person than just a pizza stone..
