It can also do something your home oven cannot: Reach the blistering-hot temperatures required to bake up the perfect pie.
If you're really into making the best possible pizza at home, the Ooni Koda 16 Gas Powered Pizza Oven is a great portable pizza oven that can help you reach that goal.
After baking 70 pizzas in four outdoor pizza ovens and one indoor countertop oven, we like the Ooni Koda 16 best because it has the biggest baking surface of all the models we tested, as well as superior heat distribution.
Our pick: Ooni Koda 16 Gas Powered Pizza Oven
This conveniently portable outdoor pizza oven lights up with the turn of a dial and can bake an obscene amount of pizzas on one tank of gas.
The Ooni Koda 16 is the most convenient and user-friendly portable outdoor pizza oven we tested, and it also bakes up a stellar pie. This 16-inch, propane-fueled oven has the largest baking surface of all the ovens we tested, which allowed us more maneuverability for launching, rotating, and moving the pizza as it baked. And the fact that it uses propane (as opposed to wood pellets, charcoal, or hardwood) means you have a continuous flame as long as there's fuel in the tank. During our tests this past winter, we got the Koda 16 up to 890 degrees Fahrenheit, more than enough heat to bake up a crispy, bubbling pie. At $600 (at this writing), the Koda 16 is an expensive, specialized cooking appliance---you could get a great gas grill that meets more general outdoor-cooking needs for about the same price. But for anyone focused on making great pizza, the Koda 16 works better than a standard grill, and its versatility and ease of use makes it a great value compared with its competitors. If you want to save some money and don't mind sacrificing oven capacity (but still prefer a propane oven), we think the smaller Ooni Koda 12 Gas Powered Pizza Oven, which typically costs about $200 less than the Koda 16, could serve you well---but we haven't tested that model.
Budget pick: Ooni Fyra 12 Wood Pellet Pizza Oven
Small but mighty (and blazing hot), this wood-pellet pizza oven bakes perfect pizzas with a hint of smokiness.
If you want to pay a little less, or if you like being more hands-on with your fuel and want just a touch of smoky flavor (and don't mind dealing with a few quirks), the wood-pellet-fired Ooni Fyra 12 is a good choice. The Fyra gets just as hot and bakes up the same quality pizzas as the Koda 16, but it's about $250 cheaper---and smaller, lighter, and smokier. Instead of propane, the Fyra uses wood pellets (the same ones that fuel pellet grills). One hopperful of pellets equals roughly 15 minutes of cooking time, so if you're baking a lot of pizzas, you'll have to feed that hopper as you go. Compared with the Koda 16, the Fyra's smaller stone and oven opening feels a little more cramped for maneuvering your pizza while it cooks. And, as mentioned above, it has its quirks: The hopper can be prone to jams, and it's normal for flames to shoot out the back of the firebox when you remove the door to launch or rotate the pizza. All that said, it was much easier to get (and keep) a fire going in the Fyra than in the Ooni Karu 12 Multi-Fuel Pizza Oven (which runs on hardwood or lump charcoal), making the Fyra a solid wood-fired pizza oven for the price.
Also great: Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo
This oven fully preheats in 15 minutes and can cook a pizza in just over 90 seconds. It's the Ferrari of countertop ovens: sleek, expensive, and fast.
The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo is designed and built for one thing: baking pizza. And it does that very well, reaching temperatures of up to 750 °F---way hotter than a home oven. Unlike our portable oven picks, which are meant for the backyard, the Breville Pizzaiolo is an indoor countertop appliance that's loaded with preset cooking functions. It also has precise temperature control, a timer, and included accessories (a metal peel and a deep-dish pizza pan with a detachable handle). At nearly twice the price of the Ooni Koda 16, the Breville Pizzaiolo is a costly specific-use appliance. But if you're really into making awesome pizza at home and don't want an outdoor oven, this is a great option.
Before I became a journalist, I was a cook for almost a decade. And for two and a half years, I spent 10 hours a day maintaining the wood-fired grill at a restaurant. To this day I still love cooking with fire.
Until recently, if you wanted an oven that could get hot enough to bake a pizzeria-quality pie, you'd have to shell out thousands of dollars and set aside space for a brick oven. But that's not the case anymore. Countertop ovens, such as the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo, and portable outdoor models from Ooni and Gozney are less expensive, and they don't require permanent residence in your kitchen or on your patio. These models make the idea of better homemade pizza attainable for more folks.
The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo is the only indoor countertop pizza oven we've tested---we first reviewed it back in 2019. Even though we've found other countertop models in our research, the Breville Pizzaiolo is in a class of its own when it comes to performance and heat output. It's well designed and packed with features, and it excels at its primary function: baking really good homemade pizza. We recommend it if you don't have the patio or yard space for an outdoor oven.
Portable outdoor pizza ovens are precisely what the name implies: small, standalone ovens that can reach the stratospheric temperatures---upwards of 900 °F---needed to bake up a Neapolitan-style pie. These models range in price from around $250 to $600 and up. No matter the maker, most portable pizza ovens have similar bones: wide, low profile, outfitted with a cordierite baking stone (cordierite is a type of ceramic often used to make unglazed pizza stones), and sits on three legs. Fueled by either propane, wood pellets, hardwood, or charcoal, these ovens pump a lot of heat into a short, wide cavity, and the result is a crazy-hot and speedy pizza cooker. Even though they're called portable, they still weigh 30 to 45 pounds---something to consider in terms of storage and mobility constraints. But if you have the outdoor space, they're a more versatile option than the Breville oven thanks to their larger opening, and they can also cost a lot less.
A pizza oven is rarely an essential item. However, you might want one if you're really into making the best possible pizza at home but don't have the budget or space for a backyard brick oven. And if you're ready to up your homemade-pizza game, this will definitely help you do that.
If you've ever tried cooking a pizza in your home oven---even with a pizza stone---the resulting pies probably lacked that perfect balance of crispy, chewy-yet-tender crust that the best pizzerias seem to achieve effortlessly. That's because your home oven tops out at 500 °F (maybe 550 °F, if you're lucky). And that's not hot enough to bake a pizza completely without the crust drying out. However, cooking your pizza between 750 and 800 °F for a couple of minutes yields a pie with puffy edges, leopard-spotted crust, and steamy melted cheese.
These ovens are not magic machines that will turn you into an expert pizzaiolo overnight. A super-hot oven is simply the last crucial step to creating excellent homemade pizza. As many folks reading this might know, your dough (recipe and technique), sauce, and toppings can be just as important as your heat source. And getting it all right takes practice. A couple of my favorite resources include Peter Reinhart's American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza and "How to Make Pizza" from NYT Cooking.
All of our picks are more than capable of baking excellent pizza. The trick is finding the best oven that works for your space and budget. Portable pizza ovens are a better value and more versatile than the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo, if you have adequate outdoor space that allows for at least 3 feet of clearance around all sides of the oven. However, the Breville is loaded with preset cooking functions, which makes it especially easy to use, and it fits on a kitchen countertop---no patio needed.
The portable outdoor pizza ovens we tested can cook more than just pizza. You can bake flatbreads like pita or naan, and roast fish, vegetables, chops, and steaks, as well. (However, we don't advise cooking super-fatty meats in these ovens, as the high heat and grease splatter can create excess smoke and fire.) I even made some delicious oysters Rockefeller in the Ooni Koda 16 for Christmas Eve dinner. I'd definitely fire up one of these in the summer when I don't want to deal with my regular oven heating up half my apartment. That said, these ovens are too hot for baking pies, cakes, cookies, and other recipes that require more moderate temperatures.
By contrast, the countertop Breville Pizzaiolo isn't quite as versatile. Its low-ceiling cavity measures 3½ inches from the stone to the upper heating element, which provides just enough clearance for pizza or cut vegetables. Fatty meats would likely splatter grease on the heating element and cause plumes of smoke even bigger than those we already saw when baking pizzas on the oven's highest heat setting.
Portable pizza ovens use either propane, wood pellets, hardwood, or charcoal (or some combination of two or more of these) as fuel. We found that a pizza oven's learning curve and ease of use is tied mostly to the type of fuel it burns. Let's break down the benefits and drawbacks of each one.
Propane: Just like backyard gas grills, propane-fueled pizza ovens ignite and heat up with the turn of a dial, so they're the easiest style to use. In our tests, the propane ovens heated the fastest (within 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the oven size and outside temperature) and provided the most consistent heat as long as there was gas in the tank. Propane ovens are also much less sensitive than solid-fuel-burning models (wood pellet, hardwood, and charcoal) to environmental factors such as below-freezing temperatures, wind, rain, and humidity. The only drawback to propane gas is the chore of lugging home a 20-pound propane tank (be sure to check local regulations regarding the transport or use of propane tanks). By my best estimate, I found that running a propane pizza oven for two and a half hours on medium-high to high heat used less than a quarter of a tank. In that time I cooked eight pizzas. Five bucks' worth of fuel to cook eight pizzas isn't bad.
Wood pellets: We found that the pellet-burning pizza oven we tested (the Ooni Fyra 12 Wood Pellet Pizza Oven) was the most convenient of the solid-fuel models. Hardwood cooking pellets are nothing more than compressed sawdust. They ignite fast and burn hot. In our tests, the Fyra took about five to 10 minutes longer to preheat than the propane ovens, but unlike charcoal and hardwood, which need to burn for up to 30 minutes before you can cook over the hot coals, pellets are ready to cook with as soon as they ignite. It's also easier to keep a steady temperature with pellets, since they sit in a hopper over the firebox and gradually feed the fire as it burns.
The biggest drawback to the pellet model is that it's a little too responsive to windy conditions. Wind naturally draws heat from the firebox in the back, through the oven cavity, and up the chimney. A stiff breeze will stoke those flames and burn the pellets much quicker, in turn making the oven too hot. Wood pellets are also very sensitive to moisture and humidity, which cause them to expand and jam up the hopper. Keep your wood pellets in a dry place and sealed in a container with a tight-fitting lid.
Lump charcoal: I like hardwood lump charcoal because it's available at most hardware stores and easier to light than solid wood (more on that below). But the biggest issue with portable pizza ovens that burn charcoal---and hardwood, for that matter---is that their fireboxes are small, about 6 by 9 inches. This means you have to continue adding fuel to both preheat and keep the oven hot, then wait for the charcoal to ignite and ash over before you put food in the oven. If you're making just a few pizzas, that's not a terrible inconvenience. But if you're hosting a pizza party for a crowd, you might find the lag time after each fuel addition annoying. Along with the hardwood models, these took the longest to heat (just shy of an hour).
Hardwood: Folks who want to replicate the flavor of pizzas baked in an Italian wood-burning brick forno might jump at the idea of a hardwood-fueled portable pizza oven. But the tiny 6-by-9-inch fireboxes in these ovens provide little headroom, so you need to find a quality hardwood supplier that sells 6-by-2-inch-long wood kindling for cooking. This is no easy task. The only wood we found that's cut for portable pizza ovens costs roughly $70 for 10 pounds or $190 for 45 pounds. That's a lot of dough (pun intended). There's always the option of cutting the wood yourself, if you're handy and have a table saw. These ovens also took the longest to preheat (up to almost an hour, compared with the propane ovens' 30 to 40 minutes).
Also, just like with lump charcoal, you need to keep refueling your oven with hardwood for it to stay at the correct cooking temperature. And you still have to wait for the wood to ignite and turn to embers before you start or continue cooking. It's a lot to manage while also trying to stretch, top, launch, turn, and remove your pizzas.
Ovens with wider openings make it easier for you to launch your pie and rotate it as it cooks. You must rotate your pizza mid-bake so that it emerges from the oven with an evenly browned and crispy crust. And you have to work fast, because an 800 ºF oven cooks pizza in about two minutes. A narrower oven opening doesn't allow you as much mobility to move and twist your baking pie compared with a wider one. The size of the baking surface is an important factor too: A 16-inch oven will give you more space to work with than a 12-inch model. However, note that the size of the opening may not match the interior. When we compared the 12-inch models we tested, one oven's opening (the Gozney Roccbox's) measured 1 inch narrower than the other two. It may not sound like much, but that inch made a big difference in how well we could maneuver the pizzas as they baked.
Most importantly, you want a removable stone so that you can clean under and around it from time to time. Each pizza leaves burnt bits of flour or cornmeal on the stone after you remove it from the oven, and you need to get rid of that detritus so it doesn't make your subsequent pies taste like an old fireplace.
Pellet, hardwood, and charcoal models do need a little extra care when it comes to cleaning, since they have chimney pipes where soot can build up. You can burn off excess chimney soot by running the oven extra hot for 15 to 20 minutes.
Portable pizza ovens are a new appliance for most folks, and for that reason we think instruction manuals are extra important. The manuals for the models we tested incorporated a lot of illustrations and sleek layouts that made them navigable. But the most important information---safety and fire management---was packed in the front, in small type. It's easy to glide right past that section, but we recommend you read (and reread!) the safety guidelines. That's where you'll find important tips, such as not to use a particular model in windy conditions (like the Ooni Fyra's manual suggests). The Gozney Roccbox doesn't include a hard-copy manual for the oven itself, only for the burner. That means getting on your computer or phone while you're outside, hands covered in flour and sauce, to troubleshoot a possible issue.
The main accessory you need for using these ovens is a pizza peel (video), but not all pizza ovens come with a peel in the box. As is the case with two of our picks, pizza peels are sometimes sold as extra accessories. While a little annoying, it's not a dealbreaker for us. We don't expect, say, a grill to include tongs and a spatula. However, it's nice when a pizza oven does include a peel, because unlike a grill, which works with almost any grilling tool, many of these pizza ovens have small openings that require peels measuring no wider than 12 inches.
We say "peels," plural, because your pizza-making efforts will be much more enjoyable if you have two: a wooden peel for dressing and launching pizzas, and a metal peel for rotating them while they bake. In our tests, we used wooden and metal peels from Ooni (sold separately) as well as the aluminum peel that comes with the Gozney Roccbox. Ooni's peels cost more than ones you can find on the internet, and they're frequently out of stock. More affordable peels are available---like this wooden one, which has 12-inch models available in various handle lengths, and this aluminum commercial-grade model---but we didn't test either one. (For more on peels, check out our Pizza oven tools you may need section.)
We also looked at extra fuel burners for the portable ovens that supported them---for example, a wood-burning attachment for a propane oven and vice versa. Ultimately, we don't think they're worth it. These add-on burners cost around $100, and in our tests, we found that they didn't perform as well as the primary burner included with the oven. It's much better to pick the fuel source you think will work best for you and go all in.
The word "portable" is accurate for this oven, in that it's not built into your patio. But at 40 pounds, the Koda 16 is pretty heavy, and its wide shape makes the oven awkward to carry. You don't want to lug it around on a long walk. But it's still good for backyards and chill outings, like tailgating and car camping---basically any situation where you don't have to carry it too far.
The Koda 16 is the most expensive portable outdoor pizza oven we tested. We understand that $600 is a lot to spend on a niche cooking appliance. But it's half the price of the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo and a little more versatile, in that it has a larger oven cavity that gives you more room to cook things other than pizza. If you want a more affordable option---one that gets just as hot but comes with its own set of quirks---check out our budget pick, the wood-pellet-burning Ooni Fyra. (And although we haven't tested it, you might also consider the Ooni Koda 12, a smaller version of the 16, that usually costs around $400.)
Even though portable pizza ovens are meant for outdoor use, they're not impervious to the elements. If possible, store your pizza oven in a garage or shed. If you don't have that kind of space available, buy a dedicated cover for your pizza oven (or wrap it in a tarp) and store it in a covered area.
Clean in and around the pizza stone occasionally. Remove the stone and wipe it down with a dry rag, then brush or wipe away all the stray bits at the bottom of the oven. (I tried using canned air, but that didn't do much other than fling the leavings around inside the oven.)
If you have an oven with a chimney, you'll want to check it for soot buildup after every three uses or so. You can clean that in a couple of ways. You can run your oven extra hot for 20 minutes to burn up extra soot. Or, if you want to give it a good once-over from time to time, wipe out the chimney pipe with a dry rag or some paper towels---but you should understand that this is a dirty job, and not at all necessary.
Ooni has released two new pizza ovens, the electric Ooni Volt 12 and the Ooni Karu 12G (an updated version of the Ooni Karu 12 that includes a glass door for better heat retention and a built-in thermometer). We plan to test the Ooni Volt 12, an indoor countertop pizza oven, to see how it stands up to the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo.
The Ooni Karu 12 Multi-Fuel Pizza Oven runs on hardwood kindling and lump charcoal for fuel (either independently or combined). First, let's talk about the wood needed to fuel this thing. The firebox on the Karu measures 9⅜ by 6 inches and requires wood that's been cut specifically to fit---6 by 2 inches is ideal. This isn't a common shape and size for cooking wood. Thankfully, the Karu also burns lump charcoal, which is easier to both light and fit into the firebox. But with either charcoal or wood, the Karu 12 takes longer to heat up than our Ooni picks, about an hour in cold weather (preheat time will vary with the outside temperature).
After a few dry runs of heating the oven and maintaining the temperature, I was finally confident enough to actually cook in the Karu. While testing, I found that once the oven got up to temperature, I could bake two pizzas before I had to add more fuel. You can probably cook more pizzas between fuel additions in the summer; I was working in 30- to 40-degree weather surrounded by snow. I thought the Karu pizzas were good, but my partner thought they were too smoky. At the end of the day, it took a lot more effort to bake pizza in the Karu 12 than in any other oven we tested.
The Gozney Roccbox is a compact, propane-fueled pizza oven that gets super hot and bakes great pizza. It also has a super-cute rounded design that reminds me of a happy space robot, and includes a convenient carrying strap with a handle. The Roccbox is the only portable pizza oven we tested that both comes with a peel and has a built-in thermometer. However, the thermometer measures the temperature just beneath the stone, so it's only useful for checking when the oven floor is hot. Once the oven preheats, the needle just stays at the maximum temperature mark (932 °F).
The Roccbox isn't a pick for a few reasons, one being that it's a 12-inch oven that costs as much as the Ooni Koda 16. At 12¼ by 3¼ inches, the Roccbox's opening is also the smallest of all the ovens we tested, which made it more difficult to rotate a pizza mid-bake. Plus, its cordierite baking stone isn't removable for cleaning. We tested the Roccbox using both the included propane and Gozney's sold-separately wood-burner accessory ($100). (We preferred using the propane burner; the wood burner never got the oven hot enough to cook.) Even after an hour and a half of constantly feeding the fire with hardwood, the stone never exceeded 400 °F. Maybe it's because we tested it during the cold winter months, but we didn't have that issue with the wood-fired Ooni Karu 12. Our advice is to stick with the Roccbox's included propane burner for best results.
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.
🛑