Affordable Portable Wood Fired Pizza Oven

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Who loves authentic wood-fired pizza? I sure do! What if you could make your own authentic wood-fired pizzas at home? I do it all the time! I love my affordable and portable wood fired pizza oven. I just love pizza ovens! We already own a few. I thought, why not write a post about it? I know there are others out there who might be curious too.

Please note: I am not a chef, I am not a professional pizza maker and I do not own a pizza restaurant. What I do love is making pizza and I feel like the OONI pizza ovens make it easy for our family to do that.

I love the pizzas that come out of my OONI pizza ovens. I use the OONI accessories as recommended by OONI.

The particular wood fired pizza oven I am talking about is the OONI Pro pizza oven by OONI. We also own the OONI Koda gas powered pizza oven that you can read more about too. At any rate, all of them are portable and make delicious pizzas in just 60 seconds.

Here are the features I love about the OONI Pizza Ovens:

Portable and Affordable

When I bought my first OONI pizza oven, the UUNI 3, (previously known as UUNI) I was sold on its portability. I’ve always loved wood-fired pizza, but a built-in wood fire oven can cost over $10,000. Being both portable and affordable, OONI pizza ovens are the perfect way to make wood-fired pizzas for any occasion.

Furthermore, a built-in oven is a permanent fixture of the home and can’t be broken down and stowed away like OONI pizza ovens. As a tiny portable pizza oven, OONI pizza ovens are so versatile. You can bring OONI pizza ovens anywhere.

Portable wood-fired pizza ovens are perfect for camping, tailgating, weekend BBQing, and even everyday use. They pack up in minutes and I just store our pizza ovens in our shed. With their fuel source being pellets, OONI wood-fired pizza ovens are also economical.

After a year of using the UUNI 3, I realized I originally bought enough pellets to last many years. While I don’t use our OONI pizza ovens everyday, or every weekend, it has become more of a special occasion food for my family. Lately, I have been using my gas-powered OONI pizza oven, the OONI Koda.

Great First Impression

My guests are always impressed when they see this little pizza oven pumping out gourmet wood fired pizzas, and quickly. In fact, my kitchen helpers sometimes can’t keep up with the speed of the OONI pizza ovens.

As the executive chef (of the house), I find that I’m often waiting on the pizzas to be rolled, sauced, and topped. When OONI pizza ovens are clocking in at over 600 degrees, these pizzas come out sizzling in 60 seconds – tops. So you have to be careful with your pizza at these temperatures, or you’ll find them a bit burned on the edges. You must rotate them with a pizza peel throughout the cook time.

You’ll get lucky the first couple times you use an OONI pizza oven and make perfect pizza. That’ll be just enough to get your taste buds focused on the goal of getting good at using OONI pizza ovens. It can be a learning curve, but I feel like any cooking appliance can be the same way.

Economical

I’ve had a lot of experience with large wood-fire pizza ovens, which really helps in navigating OONI pizza ovens. With a large wood-fire pizza oven, you’ll need to learn how to work with hot coals. But with the OONI wood-fired pizza ovens, you’ll need to learn how to use wood pellets and the pellet hopper.

There is a bit of a learning curve. It took me a while to get it down to a science that I know how to control. Lighting OONI pizza ovens can be a chore depending on your weather, but I just bit the lazy bullet and bought a propane torch. And now, after a year and many ruined pizzas, I can cook about 9/10 pizzas flawlessly.

Versatility

I haven’t tried cooking other items in the OONI other than pizza, but I’ve heard about them. I just don’t have the patience to cook a roast, a loaf of bread, or anything else other than a pizza at this time.

Therefore, for me, OONI pizza ovens are just meant for pizza. Why? It cooks them very fast. Like I mentioned, my kitchen staff can’t keep up with the oven. While that means I’m usually wasting wood pellets, it gives me a break in between cooking pizzas. If I had an assembly line going I could crank out about 10 pizzas in 20 minutes.

Notable Issues With the UUNI 3

I’ve run into a few problems over the past year while using my UUNI 3.  These could all be my fault (user error). Or they could point to maybe a design flaw or even just bad luck. While in between cooking pizza in the UUNI 3, I often have to reload the pellet hopper.

When I add wood pellets, often times the oven will start smoking heavily.  I also notice the flame dies down a bit, if not disappears entirely. If I try to do something about it, usually I start fanning under the burner. When I do this, 9/10 times it will create a noticeable backdraft and shoot a little flame out the bottom of the burner. Could it be the humid weather attributing to this phenomenon?

Other issues are that the pizza will seem to cook on top faster than underneath. This problem, I know from experience, is that the fire had not become hot enough on the pizza stone before loading a pizza in.  I should have waited for a couple minutes for the flame to heat up the pizza stone in order to cook the bottom better.

My last issue with the UUNI 3 is that since it is so narrow, it makes turning the pizza very hard with a pizza peel. Sometimes I need to pull the pizza out, and turn it, then put it back in, which can put a damper on the heat.

This is one reason I prefer the OONI Koda gas-powered pizza oven. It is easier to get fired up for sure.

Reasons to Buy an OONI Pizza Oven

If you enjoy wood-fired pizzas and cooking outdoors, this affordable and portable wood-fired pizza oven is perfect for you. OONI pizzas tastes delicious! Just like it would at an authentic Italian restaurant. The pizza looks how it tastes! Sizzling crispy pepperoni, hot bubbling mozzarella, and a crust that’s so perfectly browned around the edges.

My family loves the wood-fired pizza that we make from our backyard, particularly Neapolitan style pizzas. It’s all about the effort of coming together as a family to create something from scratch that we can all share and love.

Here is a step by step tutorial for using OONI wood fired pizza ovens.

Start making homemade authentic wood-fired pizzas with our homemade pizza dough recipe.