Backyard Gator said:

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LostTexasBoy said:

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Backyard Gator said:

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Your friend doesn't know how to manage an oven or work a peel.

He burned tf out of that pizza, and his dough is too large for his oven space.

If you're considering what to buy, I'd start by buying a pizza stone off Amazon, and see how you like using that in your oven.

The problem with committing to an Ooni or even a terracotta oven is you need all of the accessories that go with it, like the regular peel, the turning peel, the working table/bench, the laser thermometer to show the oven temp. An Ooni can cook your pizza in a minute, are you willing to stand by and watch it to ensure it doesn't burn? Do you have cooking space near your backyard or garage so you're not carrying your pizza on a peel through the house to take it outside? These are all things you need to consider.

If you're only going to use it a few times a month, I'd honestly recommend building your own DIY pizza oven out of paver stones and bricks, it'll cost less than $100.

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I really appreciate the reply and the input.

To answer your questions:

Yes, he had all of the gear you mentioned.

And yes, I can manage to stand by for one minute. Whether you meant to be a snarky ******* or not that comment wasn't necessary. I legitimately came here for advice. Regardless, I appreciate all of your other posts and advice, and I'm glad you're the one that replied.

And I didn't mention this, so my bad, but he made 20+ pizzas last night. It was a big, popular stop on the neighborhood Halloween, trick-or-treat trail. He admitted that he does it completely differently when it's just him and his family. These pics were taken at like 9 PM after people had been out making pizzas for 3-4 hours. He knew the log was too big and even said if it was for "non-mass production" he would have managed the big log and the entire coals much better.

I'm more asking about an Ooni/gas pizza oven versus a terracotta one. Also, my wife talked to an Ace Hardware guy who said that a Gozney was the #1 oven that he'd recommend. I'd never even heard of it. Thoughts?

As for the build your own, do you have any website links or YouTube links that you'd recommend?

I loved the wood-fired char that it gave the pizza. Does a gas oven give it the same char?

To me, the terracotta is like an old school charcoal grill. Yes it'll take more time. But with the right amount of time
(aka weekend) that's ok. But, I know that I could be very misinformed. I'm just curious about the different options.

Again, I appreciate the response. Just trying to figure out the distinction between the two and the differences involved beyond a pizza stone.

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Yeah, I was re-reading my comment now, and that did come off snarky, and it wasn't my intention. My apologies. I was going back and editing as I was typing, and I didn't complete my thought.

With an Ooni, if you use just wood as fuel, it can take 45 minutes to an hour to get it up to temp. You can use charcoal, but that will get you up to around 500. If you want to get the full Neapolitan pizza experience, it needs to be around 750-1000, and more like somewhere between 750-800. The thing is, even if you get everything right, you will be working for an hour for a window of one or two minutes where you have the perfect temperature to cook your pizza. So when I asked if you were willing to wait a minute while it cooks, my incomplete thought was, "Are you willing to work for an hour to only have a one minute window where you can cook?" Because while I do it, I freely admit it can be frustrating, and it probably isn't for everyone.

I haven't used a terracotta oven, so can't comment on it. This one looks like a terracotta fish you can buy at Outdoor World in Dallas. My issue with that oven is the size. The opening is only 12.5 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall, this means your typical pizza will be Neapolitan size, or the size of a dinner plate. Why is that an issue? Because when you're making pizzas, you can't make just one, you're making multiple to feed your family. So going back to my example from above about spending an hour to get a perfect temp for a one minute window, you're going to need that one minute window four different times if you're feeding four people. That is where the frustration can set in, and patience is needed.

The site says the terracotta oven comes to temp in 15 minutes, I'll have to see that to believe it. If it can come to 800 degrees, I'll be damn impressed. The design seems to make it ideal for holding heat in, so that is a plus. The problem with the ooni is the limited space in the firebox. You can't put enough charcoal in it to really ratchet up the heat to 750-800, you have to use wood to do that. Maybe the terracotta has more room and allows you to do that.

I've heard of Gozney, heard good things about it, but never used it. AFAIK, Gozney uses gas, and I don't use gas burners to make pizza. It's just a personal preference thing. I'm sure you can make good pizza using a propane burner, but if I'm going to make a pizza in an outdoor pizza oven, it's going to be wood burning. If I'm going to use gas, I might as well make it inside in my standard oven.

The reason I recommend buying a pizza stone off Amazon before you do anything is because all of these ovens operate essentially the same way, by heating up a stone that you place the pizza dough on. The difference between doing it on a wood-fired Ooni or a propane-fired Gozney or even this terracotta fish versus in an standard oven is you don't have the dome space near the heating element that you're turning the peel in to continue to cook/char the dough. In a standard oven, you just have heat, and the stone retaining the heat. So it's kind of a crawl before you walk thing.

I've seen people on the ooni forums who decided they liked pizza, and bought an ooni, and they're posting pictures of wrecked pizza after wrecked pizza, wondering what they did wrong, and the problem is they tried to run before they learned to crawl. There are people who say, "Well, everyone wrecks their first pizza in an ooni", except I didn't. Why? Because my first ever pizza wasn't made in a wood-fired oven cranked up to 750-800 degrees, allowing me to burn everything before I understood what I was doing. I started using a regular oven, because my goal was to make something terrific in something everyone has in their kitchen. I only have an ooni because someone gifted it to me for Christmas because I couldn't bring myself to buy one. I thought it was a single purpose tool, and while I like Neapolitan pizza, it wasn't like I needed an oven to make it all the time. I also didn't need it so badly that I was willing to spend $600 on one (what it cost at the time, the price has since gone down). The reason I enjoy the one I have now is because it means I can watch the best pizzaiolos in the world at work, and there isn't anything they can do in their restaurants that I can't replicate at home. The ooni gives me that ability.

A gas-fired oven should be able to give you the same char ("leoparding") as a wood-fired as long as the temp is managed. The leoparding is just a result of temperature and spinning it on the peel at the correct time so it doesn't burn, but just chars it just right.

As for a DIY oven build, I like this guy's video:



I actually think he doesn't make his deep enough and wide enough, and would make some adjustments, but his concept of using bricks and paving stones is perfect.

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