5 Reasons to Consider Buying an Ooni Pizza Oven Right Now

Dec 08, 2023

Many people consider pizza to be food of the gods. But making it from scratch at home is challenging because regular ovens don’t get hot enough to create pizzeria-style pies. So if you’re an aspiring pizzaiola, you may want to invest in an Ooni portable outdoor pizza oven that does just that. We love two versions of the Ooni: the Ooni Koda 16 (our top pick) and the Ooni Fyra 12 (our budget pick).

This conveniently portable outdoor pizza oven lights up with the turn of a dial, and it can bake an obscene amount of pizza on one tank of gas.

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Small but mighty (and blazing hot), this wood-pellet pizza oven bakes perfect pizzas with a hint of smokiness. But it’s a little more hands-on than the gas-fueled Koda 16.

Here’s why it’s worth considering buying an Ooni pizza oven right now:

Home ovens top out at 500 or 550 °F, about 200 to 300 degrees short of the conditions needed to yield that platonic ideal of a Neapolitan pie, with “puffy edges, leopard-spotted crust, and steamy melted cheese,” said senior staff writer Lesley Stockton, who wrote our guide to the best pizza ovens.

Although a 500 °F oven can certainly melt cheese and yield a chewy crust, if you want to make pie like you can get only at a pizza place, then a pizza oven is essential. “The difference between a home-baked pizza and a pizzeria pizza is the structure of the crust because of the heat and the time it spends in the oven,” Lesley said.

If you also want to impart a smoky aroma to your pies, then the less-expensive, wood-pellet-fired Ooni Fyra 12 is your better bet. The Koda 16 is what we recommend for making stellar pies while enjoying the greatest ease of use. Which brings us to …

Ever splurge on a new toy with great excitement, only to find your enthusiasm immediately dwindling upon realizing how much work it’ll take to get the thing up and running? Or maybe you’ve considered building your own pizza oven, but you just aren’t cut out for bricklaying. The Koda 16 boasts tool-free assembly (though you may want someone’s help hoisting the 40-pound oven out of the box). As noted in our guide, after you unfold the Koda 16’s three legs, slip in the baking stone, and hook up its gas hose to a propane tank, this oven is ready to be fired up.

The wood pellets that fuel the trickier-to-use Fyra 12 and the 30-pound liquid-propane tanks used by the Koda 16 are both easy to find, either online (for the pellets) or at hardware stores (for the propane). And you won’t have to make many trips to the store for the propane tanks; Lesley found that the Koda 16 can “bake an obscene amount of pizzas on one tank of gas.”

Our portable-pizza-oven testing happened to take place from December to March in New York City. Still, Lesley found that the Koda 16 performed impressively even in windy, below-freezing temperatures. Its pizza stone got up to 890 °F (a little below its touted maximum temperature of 932 °F, but more than hot enough to do its job). With proper safety precautions, you can take the Koda 16 camping or tailgating. Or you can simply enjoy the thrill of torching your pizza amid the frigid air while all of your neighbors are inside, huddled around their Dutch ovens.

Of course, Ooni ovens also perform wonderfully in warm weather. And Lesley particularly recommends cooking with an outdoor pizza oven “during the peak of summer if you don’t want to heat up your kitchen with your conventional oven.”

If you’re envisioning using your Ooni oven to feed an entire kids’ birthday party or a block party, we’re here to tell you that you’ll probably have the most fun serving just a few hungry mouths at a time. Three staffers who own an Ooni oven all report that using it to churn out pies for large crowds means staying tethered to it for a couple of hours (or possibly all night). The Fyra, in particular, requires extra attention, since you need to periodically replenish the pellets. That might be your idea of a good time, but if not, we think you’ll get the most enjoyment from impressing a handful of eaters.

Our testing showed that outdoor pizza ovens can handle roasting fish, vegetables, and steaks, as well as baking flatbreads like naan or pita. And if you want to try creating even-more-audacious dishes, consider this: Lesley (who worked in professional kitchens for nearly a decade) once prepared a dozen oysters Rockefeller for a Christmas Eve dinner, reporting that “the resulting oysters were browned on top and bubbling hot under the cheesy crust. No other cooking appliance in my kitchen could’ve come close to delivering such a stellar dish.”

This article was edited by Catherine Kast and Annemarie Conte.

Rose Maura Lorre

Rose Maura Lorre is a senior staff writer on the discovery team at Wirecutter. Her byline has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Salon, Business Insider, HGTV Magazine, and many more. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, and lots and lots of houseplants.

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