Ooni Karu 12 Multi-Fuel Outdoor Pizza Oven – 12 Inch Pizzas in 60 Seconds

**edit 2: I emailed the company. Someone got back to me within 24 hours. Asked for more detail model information and my replacement stone is already on its way to me. Really impressive customer service** edit 6/15/23*. After 3 months of weekly use (i really do love the oven) I discovered today that my pizza stone has cracked. I reached out to Ooni, we will see see how they respond. I’ve had multiple pizza stoneds over the years and another cheaper pizza oven. None of those stones ever cracked. I’ll update the review with the company’s response.** So it’s been an evolution. Starting making pizza on a stone in my oven, to pizza on the big green egg, to pizza in a pellet pizza oven (the ok mimiuo outdoor pizza oven) to this. In fairness I’ve only used it once (a test run last night where I got it to temp and baked some pitas) but I’ve been at this game long enough that I can tell how good this is. I should note that I was mostly fine with the mimiuo. It was inexpensive and workable. The airflow was not great and I struggled to get the stone sufficiently hot relative to the top of the oven (in part because of how crude the airflow controls were) but I was able to make some passable pizzas. I never got the snap in the crust I wanted but it was ok. I always hated the pellets. they simply don’t taste or smell like actual wood. I found myself trying to run the pellet oven with actual wood. Which sort of worked ish. Long story. I wanted to upgrade and the firebox on the mimiuo died so. Here we are. 1) the fit and finish on the Ooni are amazing. There are no unfinished surfaces. No raw edges. 2) it is very well insulated. The box still feels hot outside. But not nearly like the last one, the oven door and fire box door are heavily insulted (and actually heavy). They also close with a near air tight fit. This is essential as it ensures all the airflow is moving through the desired paths. Not leaking in where it shouldn’t. The result is an oven that is hot enough to cook in 15 minutes (and mind you it’s late winter here so quite cold out). The prior oven took close to an hour and the stone was never hot enough. I’m my experiment. I got the stone to about 700F and the oven temp to around 840F. 8” pita bread were cooking in 15 seconds. With a turn required at 10s I’ll do a pizza tomorrow and update my review but so far couldn’t be more impressed.

Countless reviews have well established that the Ooni Karu makes great pizza, so I'm just going to share a few "pro tips" to help those getting started: 1) Fuel. You'll see no shortage of small, pizza oven wood logs on Amazon. They are ridiculously expensive for wood. If you've ever bought firewood, you know how inexpensive wood is. A far more economical option are wood chunks intended for smoking -- they are substantially less expensive. You can find them at any store that sells grilling supplies, and you can probably find someone local who will sell you a bulk amount at a discount (I would recommend buying these in person to ensure you are getting good sized chunks). 2) Launching the pizza. As you'll quickly find out, if your pizza doesn't glide off the peel into the oven, your pizza will be ruined. Easiest way to overcome this is use a wooden paddle because the dough doesn't stick to it as easily as a metal one and to heavily flour your dough before stretching it. Don't go light on the flour -- be very liberal. When you're building your pizza, shake the paddle from time to time to ensure there's no sticking. And then don't wait too long after making the pizza to put in the oven. When the oven hits 600 F, that's when I start preparing the first pizza. If you add another piece of wood at that point, it will get up to 750 F very fast. (You will still need a metal paddle because it works best for helping to rotate the pizza while it's cooking and then removing it from the oven.) 3) Burning and burnt edges. To avoid burning, you need to rotate the pizza as often as every 15 seconds with tongs. Your inclination will be to avoid disturbing the pizza while it cooks, but it cooks extremely quick, and thus, burns quickly. 4) Soft center. If the pizza crust is soft in the center, despite cooking it so long that the edges are over cooked, this could mean three things: A) The crust is thick in the center. This often happens when stretching the dough if you're not intentional about starting from the inside and working out -- be mindful of this while stretching it; B) Too heavy on the toppings, especially sauce. If you go heavy on the toppings, it takes longer to cook the pizza in the center because it ever gets close to the fire; or C) The pizza stone wasn't hot enough. The pizza stone really needs to be at 750 F. Anything lower and the bottom side of the crust just won't get cooked right.

Quality is very high, design is sleek and overall a very impressive unit. I have a high end Weber grill that I have been using with a pizza stone and the quality upgrade of the wood fired pizza has been significant. Happy with the gear up time for the stone to reach temp, takes a little longer than on the grill but faster than the oven, about 25 minutes with using wood. Sharing some of my experience below on how to start out: Huge energy saver going with the wood fuel option. Very efficient unit, can't speak to how much propane it goes through when using that option because we only want wood fired pizza, but it really requires very little wood. I do use some charcoal to get it going, about 12 briquettes. Purchased a nice long metal grill brush with a scraper to clean the stone between pizza's. This thing runs hot with an open flame and the leftover flour on the stone after cooking a pizza, gets turned to bitter ash that will stick to the bottom of your next pie and impact the flavor significantly. High temp glove or tongs are good to have on hand to adjust the baffle when cooking. I fully open the baffle to get up to cooking temp. For my dough recipe, the sweet spot is around 700 surface temp on the stone to start cooking. The top was cooking too quickly for me with the baffle fully opened, so I found closing it half way while cooking made a very even cook from top to bottom. May take some trial and error to get it right for your dough. Found the tinder box full of wood gets through two pizza's before needing to add wood and gave about 2 full minutes for the new wood to catch before going back in to cook. Making my own dough, big difference. I tested out the store bought and it seems more geared to an oven baked pizza and darkened too much before cooking through. I'm sure you could play with it by cooking at a lower temp but really, the quickly cooked pizza is what gives that perfect dough consistency that I was missing on the Weber.

WOrks just as advertised. Great pizza in 2 minutes per pie. A little much for just one pie (better if cooking several). Everyone gets to prepare their own pizza, and quick cook time makes a GREAT pizza in a hurry.

Bought for the boyfriend as a bday gift and it’s the gift that keeps on giving- real win win situation here for me. Shipped quickly, set up was easy. We bought the gas attachment and have only used pro pain so far, it was ready to use within 20 min of turning it on the first time. Really easy to use even on the first try, and it’s only getting better with use! Easy to adjust the heat too, we get it hot and then crank it to low right after sliding the pizza in and that’s been the best results so far. I use a homemade sourdough pizza dough recipe and it’s wicked easy and CRAZY delish. Even basic store bought dough is transformed into heavenly charred goodness with this thing. 1000000% recommend to home cooks/foodies/etc. so much fun and SO much yum

very sturdy oven. beautifully designed too. one pleasant surprise is that if you order the Karu 12 now, it comes with the upgraded fuel basket, similar to that of the 12G. this oven works fantastically well burning charcoal and wood. however, when attached the gas burner, it struggles to get up the temperature. that's because Ooni recommends using it with the chimney on and door off, which lead to a lot of heat loss. having the door loosely on does not solve the issue because the burner has a safety mechanism that turns down the flame. it took me a while to figure out the solution: to use a stove wind screen. the height of most windscreen covers the stone level to minimize heat loss but leaves the flame level open for air intake. with the wind screen the oven can get to 870F in 25 mins. The Karu 12G allows you to use the burner with door on, because there are gaps around the door, which make the oven less efficent when burning wood. matter of fact, there is one review comparison that found the 12G takes longer to come to temp compared to the 12 while burning wood even with the smaller fuel basket, despite of what Ooni claims. in Summary, if you want to avoid the burner efficiency issue, go with the 12G, or get a windscreen. however, there's a possibility that the 12G has a less efficient door.

I made my first attempt at pizza today and I emphasize, attempt! This is definitely not for the newbie home cook. I consider myself to be an intermediate to advanced home cook/baker and I know after a few uses I will be making perfect pizzas in no time. Here are my tips: 1. Watch the OONI videos online, the intro videos provide a lot of tips that helped. 2. Get organized and prepare ingredients before you start the fire, it heats up very fast and by the time I made my first pizza the wood fire had dissipated a lot so I had to add more wood and wait for it to get fire in the oven. I feel like I wasted my wood because of my misstep. 3. Make sure the pizza peel is cooled down when you put the next pizza on it because the dough will stick. I used a cutting board to top my pizzas. 4. Do not walk away from the pizza oven, I know this seems obvious but I burned one pizza when I walked away for 20 seconds. 5. Make the dough as thin as possible to get the crust crispy and cooked through or you will have a raw center with a cooked toppings. 6. Get the infrared thermometer. I didnt and it would have taken a lot of the guess work out of it and I could have closed the chimney to adjust the temperature, therefore avoiding the raw center and cooked toppings. I will be getting one. All in all this is a great little pizza oven and is very high quality. If you haven't made pizza at home before you might find it challenging. I've been making pizza at home in my oven and outdoor grill for many many years.

I'd been making pizza on a kettle grill for years with steel pizza stone and wood. That setup was difficult to control and easy to burn pizza when trying to get high heat, having to resort to cooking pizzas with a pan protector on the steel stone. Got this Karu 12 on sale and very glad I did. I had no issues creating perfect pizza directly on the stone and my past experiences torching pizzas on a kettle grill definitely helped as this was so much easier to control. Within the first 15 seconds of getting the pizza on the stone you will have to start rotating it. I did smaller than 12" pies which were easier to handle and they come out so quick it is not too hard to feed a small group with the smaller pizzas. Can move the pizza closer to the wood box to get more sear or closer to the opening to back off heat. If you are serious about quality pizza this is excellent value for the cost.