These 4 Ovens Let You Make Restaurant-Quality Pizza at Home
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The world is full of incredible food, but nothing hits the spot quite like a fresh pizza. It doesn’t matter whether you prefer toppings, or keep it traditional, swear by thin crust, or dive into deep dish; all pizza has its merits
Making restaurant-quality pizza at home used to require a lot of expensive, large equipment. If you weren’t willing to build a wood-fired oven in your backyard (assuming you even had one), it wasn’t really worth it. That’s changed recently with the advent of home pizza ovens.
Newer ovens are portable and designed for home cooks who want to make fresh pies on a weeknight. Sure, it’ll take more time and effort than calling your local pizzeria, but you’ll be able to enjoy your pizza in a couple of minutes instead of half an hour. Plus, you get to control the size of your pizza, the cheese to sauce ratio, and how heavy-handed to be with the toppings.
If you’re a home chef who wants to take pizza making seriously, getting one of these ovens is the key.
What Are the Best Home Pizza Ovens?
There are many factors to consider when choosing the best home pizza oven for you; below are the most important ones, which we considered while we were researching this list.
Fuel: Home pizza ovens can run on a variety of fuel sources, including wood pellets, propane, and natural gas. Our picks reflect that variety.
Maximum temperature: Cooking pizza properly requires extreme heat to ensure the top and bottom reach the same level of doneness simultaneously. The pizza ovens below can reach temperatures of up to 950 degrees Fahrenheit.
Portability: All of the home pizza ovens in this guide are small enough to be taken with you on a camping trip or to a music festival. If you live in an apartment and love pizza, you won’t have to make a lot of room to store any of these ovens.
Indoor / Outdoor Use: We know not everybody can access outdoor space, so we’ve included pizza ovens that can be used indoors and won’t produce smoke.
1. Ooni Fyra 12
Based on our hands-on testing, Ooni’s Fyra 12 is the best home pizza you can get right now.
Part of the oven’s appeal is its size; it weighs just 22 pounds, its three legs fold inward, and its smoke vent can be stored inside the oven when it’s not in use. The Fyra 12 is so small that Ooni offers a carrying case for it. We tried the case, and it made carrying the oven from place to place a breeze.
The Fyra 12’s portability is a big deal, but its ability to make pizzeria-quality pies is what impressed us most. The outdoor oven runs on wood pellets, which you need to top up during long cooks. It takes about 15 minutes for the oven to reach its top temperature of 950 degrees, where it’ll stay as long as you keep adding fuel.
Ooni says the Fyra 12 can make a 12-inch pie in as little as 60 seconds, but that depends on the thickness of your dough. We found 90 seconds to be a good sweet spot, making sure to rotate our pizza every 30 seconds or so. We won’t lie, it takes a little while to get the hang of sliding a pizza off your peel, maneuvering it inside the oven, and pulling it out. Our patience was rewarded with delicious pizza, though.
When you’re finished cooking, the Fyra 12 is incredibly simple to clean. Let the rest of your pellets burn, and pour out the ashes from its fuel tray. Wipe down the oven’s pizza stone and chimneys with a wet paper towel, and you’re done.
Ooni’s Fyra 12 streamlines the process of pizza making in ways that makes it less intimidating to less-experienced home cooks. If you’ve always wanted to make pizza from scratch at home, you won’t find a better way to cook it.
2. Gozney Roccbox Outdoor Pizza Oven
Gozney’s Roccbox Outdoor Pizza Oven is another one of our favorites, and it’s the way to go if you don’t mind using gas as your heat source. Using gas makes it a lot easier to regulate the temperature of your oven and requires a lot less maintenance.
The oven gets up to 932 degrees, and Gozney says it can cook a Neapolitan-style pizza in about 60 seconds. Again, your experience will vary significantly based on the thickness of your pie. Check your pizza every 30 seconds, and you won’t run into any issues.
We’re big fans of the Roccbox’s overall design — its insulated body keeps heat from escaping the oven and prevents the outside from getting hot to the touch. Its thermocouple probe lets you check its temperature at a glance. There’s no guessing about when the oven is ready for a pizza; you’ll know for sure.
That heavy insulation comes at the cost of portability, though. Yes, the Roccbox’s legs flip up like the Fyra 12’s, but this oven weighs around 64 pounds. That’s not a big deal if you’re taking it from your home to the backyard, but you may want to think twice before taking it on a trip.
Overall, the Roccbox is a solid outdoor pizza oven that’ll deliver consistent results each time you use it.
Buy Roccbox Outdoor Pizza Oven $499.00
3. Pizzacraft Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven
If you have a gas stove, Pizzacraft’s Pronto lets you make high-quality pizza indoors.
The tiny, multi-part oven sits on top of your stove’s burner, which heats the pizza stone inside to a high temperature. The oven can reach a maximum temperature of 600 Fahrenheit, which Pizzacraft says is high enough to cook a pizza in around six minutes. The oven takes roughly 15 minutes to heat up fully, and you can watch its progress by checking the thermometer built into its lid. The lid is perforated, and its air holes allow steam to escape, ensuring a crispy crust.
It may not get as hot as a full-sized pizza oven, but the Pizzacraft Pronto has features the others lack. It’s under 15 pounds, so it’s easy to transport. You never have to worry about fuel (so long as the place you’re going has a gas stove), or think about the weather. You can make fresh, homemade pizza at the height of winter.
If you’re looking for a dedicated indoor pizza oven designed to offer the best possible experience in a small, easy-to-manage package, we can’t recommend Pizzacraft’s Pronto highly enough.
Buy Pizzacraft Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven $69.99
4. Heritage Pizza Stone (and your home oven)
Using a dedicated pizza oven may be the best way to make pies at home, but you can still get great results from your indoor oven by investing in a pizza stone.
This one from Heritage Products is 15-inches wide, weighs just over three pounds, and costs under $40. Heritage says its thick slab of cordierite stone heats up twice as quickly as a traditional one, and its non-stick surface makes it easy to clean.
The biggest difference between using a pizza stone and an at-home pizza oven is temperature. Most home ovens only get up to 500 degrees, which is more than enough to cook a pizza but not hot enough to get an ultra-crispy crust. Using Heritage’s pizza stone will heat your pizza evenly from both the top and bottom, giving you a more even cook. The hot stone will start to crisp up the bottom of your pie when the dough hits it, which you won’t get if you use a traditional pan.
If you want to upgrade your home pizza-making while using the oven you’ve already got, Hertiage’s Pizza Stone is the way to go.