This week, the free monthly post takes a deep dive into my long and winding pizza oven quest, including many insightful recommendations from you—and Sam Sifton, plus some other great experts. Next week, you'll meet our architect, who helped us make an awkward house feature become one of its defining moments. Happy weekend!
I’ve spent a good chunk of my career studying and writing about food, but, still, I have huge gaps in my cooking experience. Outdoor cooking is one. I’ve flipped burgers on the Weber kettle grill on our Brooklyn terrace, but that’s like riding a bike with training wheels. Ojai is my chance to fill this gap. For the first time, we’ll have some outdoor space where we can cook and eat. My goals are to learn to grill the Argentine way, with indirect heat, and to use a wood oven for pizza and other breads. Early in my career, I worked at bakeries in Paris and New York, but their wood-fired ovens were the kind that baked dozens of loaves at once. I want to captain my own oven and turn out thin charred-edge pizzas, blistered breads, and slow roasted beets. Between me and this personal challenge stands just the right pizza oven for our patio. A few months ago, when I was still at Food52, I asked my newsletter subscribers for their pizza oven recommendations and said I’d share the responses (I’ve distilled the most specific ones below—get ready for some serious pizza oven nerding out). I also called up Sam Sifton, my former boss at The New York Times and a well-regarded pizza-head; I reached out to Alexandra Stafford, author of Pizza Night. Their feedback and tips are woven throughout; and I read up on Reddit, of course.
Here’s what opinionated pizza people think you should consider when shopping for a pizza oven:
Pizza Oven Recommendations These are organized from the oven that was recommended the most times down to ones that were highly recommended but got fewer notes from my readers and sources. Here goes!
The Gozney has made cooking pizza in a stone oven more accessible (plus, it’s shaped like a macaron and therefore cute as a button). Gozney Dome models are $2,000 versus most other dome oven brands, which start at around $5,000. They’ve also smartly made the oven usable with both wood and gas. But there are size and performance compromises that come with the lower pricetag, as you’ll see in the following reader comments: “I researched pizza ovens a lot and decided to get the Gozney Dome. It is pricey compared to many on the market, but the dual fuel option is great. I can easily get the temp to 950ºF without a ‘door’ on the front (one of the options), which is perfect for the style of pizza I like—Neapolitan—thin crust with a good char. You should consider the pizza turner (peel) they sell, as the oven is very hot and you must turn your pizzas as they cook. They cook in a few minutes, sometimes under two minutes.” - Mark Kaufman “I love it. I recommend if you are building an outdoor kitchen and placing the pizza oven on the counter to raise the height a little bit, like a shelf so that you don’t have to bend over to look into the pizza oven. It really comes in handy when making multiple pizzas in a row.” - Morris Sherman “It does take a little bit to warm up. While it can do wood or propane, I mostly use propane out of convenience. When burning wood, the coals start to encroach on the cooking area a lot. You definitely want their wood rack to keep it as contained as possible. Their peels work well too.” - Cory Duggin “There's a learning curve with these ovens, and I think because the advertisements make the process look so simple, it's easy to think you can throw any pizza in the oven at 900ºF, and it will emerge leopard spotted and perfectly cooked. But it won't! The logs need to be tiny—I bought a few huge cases of these tiny logs to experiment, and I found the process so frustrating. To keep the oven up to temperature, you have to feed it with these tiny logs constantly. And when you have a pile of wood in the Gozney Dome, it takes up space, which gives you less room to maneuver. So, if someone is interested in using wood to make their pizzas, I don't think the Gozney is the right option.” - Alexandra Stafford “I bought a Gozney Dome in the spring of ’24. For the most part I love it. Surprisingly, I’m very happy with the gas and use that about 99% of the time. I had been planning on buying a Forno Bravo from the Pizza Institute in Chicago, and they highly suggested dual fuel options as it removes one highly sensitive variable. FYI, I’m a charcoal-only griller and smoker, so gas for me is novel. Pros
Cons
I don’t have the Neapolitan arch, but with the door it does not seem to be an issue. FYI I live in the mountains in Utah and cooked pizza last week with temps below freezing and no issues.” - Brian Biela
The Ooni, which is valued for its portability and prices, had lots of fans, but nearly as many cranky detractors. My takeaway is that it can be a good choice if your space is limited and you go in knowing that it will take practice to get it right, and that it’s not built to perform like a traditional pizza oven. “DO NOT get the Ooni pizza oven. In a nutshell, it goes through an unsettling amount of propane for one pizza session and somehow both burns and undercooks the pizza. We gave it a few tries, thinking we just needed to fine tune our methods but never got the hang of it. It’s been sitting in the basement ever since.” - Laura Sorkin “I bought the Ooni Koda 16—it's larger than the Ooni Koda 12—and I really like it. There is enough space to make for easy maneuvering of the pizza. It's not quite as large as the Dome, but it is roomy enough and it's significantly less expensive. It gets just as hot as the Dome. It doesn't retain heat as well, so in between making pizzas, it takes slightly longer to get back up to temperature, but overall it's a great oven. I bought a door for my Gozney Dome to help with heat retention in between bakes.” - Alexandra Stafford
Mugnaini has been making pizza ovens and cooking hearths for 30 years. They offer a lot of options, from portable pizza ovens to large ones built for commercial use to masonry kits so you can design your own shell for the oven. Their pre-built pizza models start at $7,000. “Hands down the best one out there. Great thing about them is you can go take a class and use one before you buy. They have a showroom and a cooking school in Healdsburg, CA. They also partially or fully assemble the ovens with proper insulation and can deliver to your site. Many dome shapes and finishes to choose from.” - BC and Christine Crowley
Forno Bravo’s Primavera ovens come in 7 colors and have a thick firebrick base and ceramic dome, but are wood only. They have other models, but they are either too large or not very attractive; however, if you’re looking for a portable oven, they have a red oven on a black trailer that’s pretty sharp. “We’ve had 3 houses and each time we move, we add a Forno Bravo. I’ve had 3 different ovens from them and like the small Primavera best!” - Sherri Farris “I have a Forno Bravo that works with gas and wood, and I absolutely love it. The gas starter helps it heat up faster, and then I cook with the wood for flavor. We cook meat on cast-iron, bread, eggs, and pizza.” - Katherine Hatcher
Alfa, an oven company based in Rome, claims that its firebrick floor, insulation, and heat circulation make for superior pizza. I was tempted by the handsome Moderno model (in red), but I didn’t get enough feedback to feel confident about it. However, I may try to get their pizza tool set, which is the best looking one I’ve seen.
This is Sam Sifton’s pick. He likes the performance and versatility. While Forno Piombo has gas options, Sam’s is all wood (the Santino 70). He’s treating it less as a tool and more as an activity. Here’s what he had to say: “I wasn't looking forward to spending a summer building an oven, so I got the Forno Piombo. It was just great. I built a surface for it that included a parilla grill. I welded a big outdoor counter that holds the parilla on one side and supports the pizza oven on the other. My pizza oven allows me to launch the pie at chest height. I like it because it’s undeniably a pizza oven. It’s got this big, tall chimney. The Ooni to me looks like an air fryer. After I built this kitchen and got the pizza oven, I said to someone: It’s like I got a neck tattoo. There’s no going back. It’s who I am. I have a pizza oven. If I light a fire in the oven on a late Friday afternoon to make pizza that night, it’ll take a couple hours to get things going. I use an infrared thermometer. What happens is the fire builds up, the dome of the pizza oven is black with soot, and as the oven heats and gets up to 800 or 950ºF, the soot clears and it’s just beautiful concrete on top. At the end of the night, I might put in a few big pieces of wood and close the door, and the next day it's still coals. With just a big piece of wood, I can keep the oven going through Saturday and the weekend. It’s way more efficient than I thought it would be.”
The Fontana is sleeker than most pizza ovens, and while it has a firebrick floor, the rest of the interior is welded stainless steel. I have friends who love this oven. “It was perfect to gather small groups of friends outside during Covid. There’s a learning curve that is greatly shortened with a laser thermometer. It’s critical to maintain the correct temperature on the oven floor. Also helpful is a high prep table. We line up toppings and sauces, and welcome guests to make their own or we prepare the pizzas for them. We make the crusts and flour them to make the process easy for our guests. The crowd pleaser? Diced butternut squash with red onion and ricotta.” - Margaret Macksey
“My wife and I made the plunge about three years ago. We decided on the Bread Stone oven and just love it. It has great capacity and you’re able to cook for 3 to 5 days afterwards. The temperature loss is pretty controlled and we’ve done scones the morning after pizza night and then a pot roast for the next day. The 950 – B is large and it’s expensive but the capacity is worth it.” - Justin Elmore
“I was at a translation conference a few years ago and ended up sitting next to Richard Gleich at dinner one night. I was complaining about my Ooni pizza oven—the propane scared the living daylights out of me, it's so low to the ground so you have to find something to put it on. I hated that thing (I ended up giving it to my neighbor). As it turns out, Richard, who I knew as an excellent technical translator, also makes a very cool, extremely reasonably priced wood-fired backyard pizza oven: Woodfyred. It's definitely worth checking out.” - Liza Tripp
In case you’re looking for an indoor pizza oven, a couple readers liked this one. Sam Sifton’s list of accessories that he considers necessities:*
* I added a few links for explanatory purposes, but this post is getting LONG and I don’t want to wear you out, so I’ll do another post sometime on my picks for outdoor cooking tools and accessories! Alexandra Stafford on her list of common mistakes people make when starting with a pizza oven:
My decision: After a lot of hemming and hawing, I decided to go with the Forno Piombo Santino 70—the neck tattoo. It’s a pretty minimal, chic neck tattoo in my opinion. After looking at the options, and then obsessively looking at them again and again, I had to be honest with myself: the look of the pizza oven matters a lot to me. It’s going to be a big object on our patio. I will see it every day as I’m standing at the sink or glancing out the window after pouring a cup of coffee. I want it to be pleasing to look at, the nicest neck tattoo imaginable. And for me, there were only a few that passed muster in the looks department (any pizza oven companies looking for some design consulting, I’m at the ready!). The Santino 70 also gets good marks on maximum temperature, heat retention, and internal dimensions, which are large enough to accommodate more than one pizza. It has a 2-inch-thick firebrick floor and a tall 2.5-inch-thick dome, so it’s well insulated and can fit other foods for roasting, like a chicken or small turkey. Its limitation is that it’s a wood-only oven. I thought a lot about this. Friends warned me against it, saying that I would likely use it less than one that uses gas and heats more quickly. But I decided that I liked this limitation; if I really want to expand my cooking skills, I need to learn to work with wood. Also, I’d like to shift the flow of my days in Ojai. In Brooklyn, I scurry around like a frantic mouse. In Ojai, I’d like to infuse a better rhythm. There’s just one issue: I’m supposed to order it this week and I noticed… it’s sold out! So if I missed any, now is your chance to tell me in the comments. Yours in slinging dough, Amanda
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Friday, June 27, 2025
My pizza oven quest led me to the "neck tattoo" of options
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