ooni OON UU-POA100 UU-P0A100 Oven, Large, Silver

**edit 2: I emailed the company. Someone got back to me within 24 hours. Asked for more detail model information and my replacement stone is already on its way to me. Really impressive customer service** edit 6/15/23*. After 3 months of weekly use (i really do love the oven) I discovered today that my pizza stone has cracked. I reached out to Ooni, we will see see how they respond. I’ve had multiple pizza stoneds over the years and another cheaper pizza oven. None of those stones ever cracked. I’ll update the review with the company’s response.**So it’s been an evolution. Starting making pizza on a stone in my oven, to pizza on the big green egg, to pizza in a pellet pizza oven (the ok mimiuo outdoor pizza oven) to this. In fairness I’ve only used it once (a test run last night where I got it to temp and baked some pitas) but I’ve been at this game long enough that I can tell how good this is. I should note that I was mostly fine with the mimiuo. It was inexpensive and workable. The airflow was not great and I struggled to get the stone sufficiently hot relative to the top of the oven (in part because of how crude the airflow controls were) but I was able to make some passable pizzas. I never got the snap in the crust I wanted but it was ok. I always hated the pellets. they simply don’t taste or smell like actual wood. I found myself trying to run the pellet oven with actual wood. Which sort of worked ish. Long story. I wanted to upgrade and the firebox on the mimiuo died so. Here we are. 1) the fit and finish on the Ooni are amazing. There are no unfinished surfaces. No raw edges. 2) it is very well insulated. The box still feels hot outside. But not nearly like the last one, the oven door and fire box door are heavily insulted (and actually heavy). They also close with a near air tight fit. This is essential as it ensures all the airflow is moving through the desired paths. Not leaking in where it shouldn’t. The result is an oven that is hot enough to cook in 15 minutes (and mind you it’s late winter here so quite cold out). The prior oven took close to an hour and the stone was never hot enough. I’m my experiment. I got the stone to about 700F and the oven temp to around 840F. 8” pita bread were cooking in 15 seconds. With a turn required at 10s I’ll do a pizza tomorrow and update my review but so far couldn’t be more impressed.

Countless reviews have well established that the Ooni Karu makes great pizza, so I'm just going to share a few "pro tips" to help those getting started:1) Fuel. You'll see no shortage of small, pizza oven wood logs on Amazon. They are ridiculously expensive for wood. If you've ever bought firewood, you know how inexpensive wood is. A far more economical option are wood chunks intended for smoking -- they are substantially less expensive. You can find them at any store that sells grilling supplies, and you can probably find someone local who will sell you a bulk amount at a discount (I would recommend buying these in person to ensure you are getting good sized chunks).2) Launching the pizza. As you'll quickly find out, if your pizza doesn't glide off the peel into the oven, your pizza will be ruined. Easiest way to overcome this is use a wooden paddle because the dough doesn't stick to it as easily as a metal one and to heavily flour your dough before stretching it. Don't go light on the flour -- be very liberal. When you're building your pizza, shake the paddle from time to time to ensure there's no sticking. And then don't wait too long after making the pizza to put in the oven. When the oven hits 600 F, that's when I start preparing the first pizza. If you add another piece of wood at that point, it will get up to 750 F very fast. (You will still need a metal paddle because it works best for helping to rotate the pizza while it's cooking and then removing it from the oven.)3) Burning and burnt edges. To avoid burning, you need to rotate the pizza as often as every 15 seconds with tongs. Your inclination will be to avoid disturbing the pizza while it cooks, but it cooks extremely quick, and thus, burns quickly.4) Soft center. If the pizza crust is soft in the center, despite cooking it so long that the edges are over cooked, this could mean three things: A) The crust is thick in the center. This often happens when stretching the dough if you're not intentional about starting from the inside and working out -- be mindful of this while stretching it; B) Too heavy on the toppings, especially sauce. If you go heavy on the toppings, it takes longer to cook the pizza in the center because it ever gets close to the fire; or C) The pizza stone wasn't hot enough. The pizza stone really needs to be at 750 F. Anything lower and the bottom side of the crust just won't get cooked right.