Ooni Pizza Oven Review (Ooni Karu Review)

It’s been a  few months now since our Ooni Pizza oven arrived so I thought it was time I did a review. An Ooni Pizza oven is an expensive piece of kit so you’ll want to know all of the pros and cons and whether it’s worth the investment.

First of all, I just want to be clear that this review is completely unbiased – we bought our Ooni Pizza oven ourselves, this post isn’t sponsored by Ooni and we aren’t affiliated with them in any way. We just love pizza! 

Just over a year ago, we finally finished our back garden after years of it being a rather desolate wasteland. It’s small but had needed a lot of work. The coronavirus lockdown, while tough, finally gave us the time to spend the hours it needed to get it up to scratch.

My husband and I love pizza and many moons ago spent around a year working in an Italian restaurant. No pizzas we’ve had since have ever been the same quality or quite as nice. Having our own pizza oven would hopefully allow us to recreate beautiful pizzas at home and spend less on takeaways too!

Once the garden was completed, that’s when our thoughts turned to finally buying a Pizza oven to add to all our other kitchen gadgets including a fancy coffee machine, waffle maker and belnder.

We did some research and found that Ooni looked like it was the best brand for us. However, we were out of luck. Ooni pizza ovens were sold out everywhere. We even tried John Lewis and Lakeland when they reopened post lockdown over the summer but to no avail.

We put our pizza oven dreams on hold over the winter as we knew we’d be less likely to use it during the colder months. By the end of January, and feeling pretty fed up with lockdown 2.0, we finally decided to take the plunge and order, despite the two month lead time. We figured by the time the pizza oven finally arrived, it should be warm enough to use it at least.

We also ordered a cover, peel and some charcoal from Ooni to get us started and an infrared thermometer, wire brush and cast iron skillet from Amazon. In total, we spent around £450.

Luckily for us, our Ooni Karu pizza oven actually arrived much faster than expected, around one month after ordering. We were very excited to get started and headed straight to Sainsbury’s to stock up in ingredients for a weekend of pizza making fun.

Ooni Pizza Oven Review: Why We Chose The Ooni Karu

There were several reasons we chose the Ooni Karu. First, we’d seen a few other people with them on Instagram and Facebook. The Pizzas looked amazing. We also like the fact we had a choice of fuel options. I love the idea of wood-fired pizzas but also that we could use charcoal or even gas (with an attachment) if we wanted to.

Another reason we chose the Ooni Karu was its portability. We loved the idea of making pizzas for our friends and family at their houses. We also purchased a skillet so we could cook deep-pan pizzas and meat in the oven too. The more we could use it, the more the investment would be worth it.

Ooni Karu Review: Our Experience

So far, two months in, our experience with the Ooni Karu has been great.

The initial build of the oven was easy to do and after a quick read of the instruction manual, we were keen to get started.

Our first batch of dough was made using the recipe in the Ooni recipe book that came with the pizza oven. This recipe is okay, but there are definitely better pizza dough recipes out there. Our favourite so far has been this one from Binging with Babish, which is now our go-to dough recipe.

Learning Curve

Using the pizza oven definitely comes with a bit of a learning curve. At first, we kept massively underestimating how long the oven would take to heat up. In colder weather with charcoal, we were finding it took around an hour to get to up temperature. Queue the odd Saturday night with a late dinner and grumpy toddler!

Launching (getting the pizza from the peel into the oven) can be a tricky skill to master and although we’ve only had one pizza that fell to bits at launch, from what I’ve read online it’s a common problem people have. We’ve also launched a couple of pizza too far so they’ve come out of the oven with a really burnt edge.

As the pizza oven is incredibly hot, pizzas cook very quickly indeed and need they turning during cooking too. Getting the oven temperature consistent, especially with charcoal or wood pellets is a skill itself. We’ve had soggy pizzas from the stone not being hot enough. We also had a cold and windy evening where the oven temperature was really affected and took ages to get back up to temperature between pizzas.

All of that said, we’ve loved the learning. We’ve used our pizza oven every weekend since we bought it bar one. Some weekends we’ve used it twice. We’ve experimented with flavours and toppings. We’ve made deep-pan pizzas and garlic bread. We’ve had a mini pizza party with my two best friends in the garden. And I can’t see our love or enjoyment of it wearing off anytime soon.

Pros of the Ooni Karu Pizza Oven –

• Different fuel options – charcoal and wood pellets. It can also be converted to gas with an attachment which costs £80.
• Easily portable. The ovens size means we can take it to friends houses with ease – we find it goes well alongside a BBQ.
• Homemade pizzas are cheap to make.
• Fun outdoor cooking experience.

Cons of Ooni Karu Pizza Oven –

• It’s small so not really designed for catering for lots of people or making larger pizzas.
• Temperature can be hard to control with charcoal and wood pellets.
• Lead time is still a couple of months so not ideal if you’d like one ASAP.
• Price at £300ish it’s not a cheap option.
• Making pizza dough from scratch is time-consuming (although you can use shop-bought if you wish)
• Using the oven takes some practice – from getting the temperature right to launching the pizza – there is definitely a learning curve involved.

Ooni Facebook Group

After purchasing our Oonu Karu Pizza Oven I decided to join the Official Ooni Pizza Group on Facebook. While there are lots of tips and advice for those who are new to the world of pizza making, there is a lot of the same questions being asked over and over and then people being mean or moaning about the same questions being asked over and over.

To be honest, I didn’t really feel like I’d found my pizza people and I feel the group could do with slightly better moderation. However, it is a great space for learning about pizza making.

Ooni Pizza Oven Review: Final Thoughts

For us, the Ooni Karu Pizza Oven has been a worthwhile investment. We love it and I can’t see that changing anytime soon.

We do plan to buy a gas attachment when they are back in stock to help with temperature control. There’s a lot to think about when cooking a pizza and eliminating one of those things would certainly make life easier, especially when cooking for a larger group of people. When it’s just us on a weekend we’ll probably still use charcoal.

We are both passionate foodies and usually spend our weekends cooking special dishes and batch cooking to make our lives easier in the week. We thoroughly enjoy being elbow deep in flour and the process of making dough, kneading, proving, making pizza sauce, stretching and topping. It is a lot of effort though and might not be for everyone although you can, of course, buy readymade dough and pizza sauce.

While the Ooni Karu was the perfect fit for us it’s worth really browsing the website and finding which oven works best for you. Some ovens only take pellets while others are bigger models that have room for a larger pizza and better temperature control.

For some, I can see a pizza oven being a bit of a novelty item that only gets used very occasionally and the Ooni probably isn’t for you if that’s likely to be the case.

If you’re unsure whether an Ooni Pizza Oven is the right choice for you, it might be worth looking at a cheaper alternative initially before taking the plunge with such an expensive piece of equipment. Supermarkets Aldi and Morrisons both do mini pizzas ovens for around the £150 mark as part of their special summer ranges.

I would say overall making pizza and cooking in the Ooni pizza oven is much more labour intensive than say doing a BBQ where it doesn’t matter if the sausages etc end up a bit burnt and you can could loads of food all at once.

Final Ooni Pizza Oven Tips

Here are a few final tips to help you get the most out of your Ooni Pizza Oven.

• You don’t need to purchase everything from Ooni. Many accessories can be purchased from Amazon and we get our charcoal from the local garden centre.
• eBay can be great for second-hand ovens although they do hold their value extremely well, especially as there is such a long lead time on purchasing new.
• If your pizza stone breaks you can contact Ooni to order a new one.
• Asda and Tesco both do budget 00 pizza flour starting at 30p for 1kg. The leading brand costs around £1.80.
• If your pizza is a bit wet, try low moisture mozzarella which can be purchased in Lidl during Italian week or from other supermarkets from cheese brand Galbani.
• Freeze mozzarella for 15 minutes before using and the grate.
• There are lots of ways to make dough including ones that can go in the fridge overnight, perfect if you’re busy and want to get ahead of the game.