Homemade pizza is a great way to enjoy the perfectly crafted pizza for you and your family. Many families use pizza night and creating pizzas as a way to enjoy more time together as a family. It’s also a great way to teach your kids some basic cooking skills. An outdoor pizza oven makes cooking pizza with friends and family even more fun.
We’ve considered 13 great outdoor pizza ovens and the Ooni Fyra 12 Wood Pellet pizza oven is by far the best option for making delicious homemade pizza. The Ooni Fyra 12 is surprisingly affordable and easy to use, making a great addition to any home’s backyard kitchen.
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Ooni Fyra 12   BEST CHOICE
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Bertello Outdoor Pizza Oven  RUNNER UP
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Camp Chef Artisan Pizza Oven  VALUE CHOICE
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13 Best Outdoor Pizza Ovens Reviews for 2023
1. Best Overall – Ooni Fyra 12 Wood Pellet Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love this:
The Fyra 12 is an excellent budget option from Ooni, and makes an excellent entry level choice. It makes good sized 12 inch pizzas with ease, heating to upwards of 950 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius) in just 15 minutes. While not the fastest in Ooni’s stable, it does a similar job for a much lower price than the average, coming in at about half the usual.
Combined with its durable, lightweight design, this pizza oven can be easily transported anywhere you need with minimal effort, or be stored away in any home: making it the perfect option for both constant and irregular pizza makers.
The Ooni Fyra is a successor to the Ooni 3.
What We Liked
- Lightweight: Minimalist construction keeps this pizza oven’s weight down, making it easy to transport, especially combined with its fairly compact size.
- Wood Pellets: Use of wood pellets for heating adds a lot to the flavor of the pizza made with this pizza oven, giving it superior taste compared to gas-fueled pizza ovens. It also makes this model cheaper and easier to fuel in the long term, particularly if you’re already buying wood pellets for something like a wood pellet grill smoker.
- Fast Heating: Insulated design and excellent air flow combine to create a very fast heating pizza oven, reaching temperatures above 950 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius) in under 15 minutes.
- Fast Cooking: Due to the ultra-high heat design, this pizza oven can make delicious, fully-cooked 12-inch pizzas in under 60 seconds. Combined with the fast heating above, this pizza oven is perfect for making quick dinners on the fly, instead of needing to make your pizza night a meticulously planned activity.
- Very Affordable: The Fyra 12 comes in at an extremely good price for the quality of this pizza oven, providing excellent performance compared to similarly priced models; it only falls short of larger or more powerful variants from the same brand.
What We Didn’t Like
- Chimney: While the chimney contributes a lot to the high performance of this model, it does fall short in one major way. Unlike other Ooni pizza ovens, the chimney doesn’t fold down. This makes it a little harder to transport than would otherwise be the case, and is a bit of an odd choice given the focus otherwise on the portability of this pizza oven.
- Slow by Comparison: While 15 minutes is relatively fast compared to some other pizza ovens on the market, it is a bit slower than similar Ooni models that are around the same size, which typically heat up in under 10 minutes.
- Tripod Design: The high-slung tripod design makes this feel a bit unsteady compared to other options. Almost all Ooni pizza ovens have three legs, but most are a bit lower slug, or angled toward the back, adding to stability and ease of use. The height of this one is a little awkward.
2. Runner Up – Bertello Outdoor Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love this:
From Bertello, this pizza oven represents a significantly less expensive alternative to the other options on this list.
While it’s not quite as good as the Ooni models, it does make an interesting choice as an entry-level outdoor pizza oven, especially as it has flexible heating options, being able to run both on wood and gas power for increased ease of use. The size is good here, with the ability to cook 13-inch pizzas, and overall, this is a solid choice if you’re on a budget.
What We Liked
- Versatile Heating: This can be used as both a wood-fired oven and a gas roaster. This both makes it easier to fire up when using it as a wood-fired oven (and makes maintaining the temperature simpler and a bit more hands off), while giving you a bit of an option to use it as a quick gas oven for foods you don’t necessarily want or need to use wood for.
- Compact: Its small design makes it easy to move around when you need it, while being sturdy enough that you don’t have to worry about damaging it if you’re even a little bit careful with it. This is not just the best product I could find overall, but the best portable outdoor pizza oven I’ve seen as well. Despite the small size, it is perfectly proportioned for restaurant style pizzas.
- Great Design: The oven is generally very stably built, and is perfectly proportioned to retain heat for quickly and evenly cooked food, particularly pizza.
- Accessories: Comes with everything you need to get started, save for the wood for cooking. This includes a cordierite stone, a scoop, and a fuel tray for whatever the fuel of your choice is (charcoal, wood pellets, wood chips, etc.).
- Price: Surprisingly affordable for such a high-quality outdoor pizza oven.
What We Didn’t Like
- Maximum Heat: This pizza oven heats up to a whopping 930 degrees Fahrenheit. While not a drawback in itself, it is worth mentioning, as most pizza recipes you’ll find will assume your oven is heated to around 800 degrees. This intense heat difference means you’ll need to do some trial and error to figure out the proper cooking time for this oven.
3. Best Value Choice – Camp Chef Artisan Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love it:
This is a unique camp chef unit among the others here, and a good, very cheap alternative to most of the others on this list.
What we liked
- Unique Design: This is just an oven chamber. It has no heating mechanism in itself and requires some other kind of fuel source to function. It functions with something like a brazier, range stove, or something of that nature. It’s designed to trap that heat and funnel it into cooking pizza on the stone, and it’s really good at that. A bit simplistic, but it’s perfect for what it’s trying to accomplish.
- Price: This is about a third of the price of our winner and some of the other top models above, which is fitting for something that has a third of the features, if that. It’s great if you already have a nice camp stove or grill, and want something to make pizza once in a blue moon—without keeping a dedicated pizza oven crowding your storage for the other 360 days a year you aren’t using it.
What we didn’t like
- Lack of Features: As mentioned, this has about a third of the features of another model. It has poor ventilation for one, with no chimney or other exceptionally placed outlet for smoke. This leads to somewhat moisture food, which can run the gamut between fine and terrible depending on what you’re cooking. The only real outlet is the front, which has no door, and certainly makes it easy to get food in and out, but also doesn’t let you seal heat inside like some other models do. This leads us to:
- Heat Retention: This is as basic as it gets; it’s not double insulated with ceramic or silicone or anything like that, it’s raw steel. Steel isn’t the worst at keeping heat in, but it’s not the best either. Given the already indirect nature of heating, this oven can take a while to heat up, reaches lower max temperatures than the best models, and can require some finagling to KEEP it hot for the duration of cooking—which is likely to be longer than the under 5 minutes of most models.
4. Ooni Koda 12 Gas-Powered
Why you’ll love this:
The Ooni Koda (technically the Koda 12) is a decent, significantly less expensive alternative to our winner and runner up. While it’s much simple, with no chimney, it’s still fairly efficient. It heats up faster than the Ooni Pro, due to using a gas powered mechanism instead of being wood or charcoal fueled.
This does remove a bit of the nice wood-fired flavor, but it still makes great pizza. And it retains a compact figure; even more so than the winning models above, so it’s great for storing when you have limited space, or transporting in large vehicles.
What We Liked
- Construction: This is a nice little gas-powered pizza oven. The main standout feature is the portable design, usable outdoors. The rolled carbon-steel construction and cordierite pizza stone are the perfect materials for making pizza; sturdy and exceptionally heat resistant.
- Size: That’s the main strength of this model in a nutshell, being usable for things like tailgating and camping with ease. It’s small and easy to move around, with a very compact frame. It measures only 15.7” x 11.6” x 24.8”; about the size of a large lunchbox or toolbox. It can easily fit in any car trunk, SUV hatch, and especially a truck bed with plenty of room to spare.
- Heat: 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius) maximum temperature, and it even heats up faster (in only 15 minutes).
What We Didn’t Like
- A little bit small compared to other pizza ovens which clock in at around 16 inches. Being this small does have its disadvantages. The square cooking surface measures 13 and a quarter inch across—this produces significantly smaller pizzas than similar pizza ovens including other Ooni Koda ovens.
5. Ooni Karu Charcoal and Wood Fired Portable Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love it:
Great heat insulation at great price. Creates a delicious smoky flavor in your pizza.
While the other Ooni options we’ve covered today are gas-powered, this one kicks it a little more old school, with an optimized wood (or charcoal) burning design that still maximizes a lot of heat.
The construction is the real standout feature here, a sturdy stainless-steel shell with a thick 15 mm cordierite baking stone inside that retains a lot of heat.
This thing makes delicious pizza, imparting an excellent smoky flavor to any pizza (or whatever else) you cook within it, especially if you use a nice flavorful wood rather than charcoal. The chimney up top allows for maximum smoke flow, so it doesn’t choke your pizza too much. The ceramic fiber insulation inside gives it even more heat retention than an insulated steel would have, so it’s great for baking.
The main issue is its supposed “portability”. Yes, it is lightweight and fairly compact in the body, but that chimney on it is a bit tall to easily transport in most things. A truck? Certainly. Van or SUV? Maybe. But a car? Not easily, if at all.
6. Ooni Pro 16 Multi-Fuel Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love it:
The Ooni Pro is an older model of Ooni pizza oven, but is still quite good. It lacks some of the incremental improvements that the Ooni 3 enjoys, such as the folding chimney and slightly better insulation (resulting in it taking longer to heat up), but is still a great alternative to the Ooni 3 if you can’t get your hands on one of those.
The only true drawback is that it costs about the same as the better model, which is why it lies slightly lower on this list, along with its slightly lower performance.
What we liked
- High Heat: This oven, much like its newer model, heats up to 923 degrees Fahrenheit. It does so in 20 minutes instead of under 10, but still cooks your pizzas up hot and ready in about a minute. This gives it a crispy, smoky crust without even giving it a chance to get soggy.
- Heat Dispersal: The chimney here also disperses heat and smoke as well as the newer model, providing just the right amount of smoke for flavor and venting the rest.
- Durable: Thicker plates of steel than the newer model makes it durable and hard to damage.
What we didn’t like
- Bulky: This thing weighs nearly 70 lbs and beyond the weight, is hard to move around due to the chimney design, being an awkward, tall hexagon that doesn’t conveniently fold like the new version.
- Price: This thing is absurdly expensive, costing about double what the newer model costs, which makes it impossible to recommend. Objectively this is a good pizza oven, but not nearly good enough to justify the increased cost over a vastly superior model. The pricing on this pizza oven is completely baffling to me.
Read more: Ooni Pro vs Roccbox.
7. Ooni Koda 16 Gas-Powered Outdoor Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love it:
This is a larger version of the other Koda model on this list, and that’s the only real difference. In terms of performance it’s largely identical. However, it heats up a bit slower, due to it being a little bit bigger, but cooking 16-inch pizzas rather than 13-inch ones.
The price difference, while relatively small, makes this largely not worth it for the most part. If you require a much larger pizza oven than usual (for entertaining, or for cooking large cuts of meat), this is a fine pick, but otherwise a bit of an overkill.
What we liked
- Construction: This is Ooni’s best gas-powered model, with a full-sized, 16-inch interior and a fairly thick (15 mm) cordierite baking stone. The construction on this oven is impeccable, with a powerful rolled carbon steel exterior that’s powder coated for easier maintenance and a bit of scratch resistance. Cordierite is likewise the perfect material for baking pizzas on, being durable and highly heat-resistant so you can boost the temperature.
- Size: The size is relatively small as well, making it easily portable. While not as easy to transport as the smaller Ooni we’ll cover below, it’s still light and easy to store as long as you have a bit of room; smaller car trunks might struggle to fit such an awkwardly shaped item, but otherwise most modes of transport should find it easy to move this around.
- The gas-powered nature makes it perfect for using pretty much anywhere. Propane is easy to get and transport as well, and provides a lot of oomph for a fairly small cost. The oven heats up in under 20 minutes as well, making it easy to prepare for use and create delicious pizzas in no time flat (in under a minute once it’s fully heated).
- Heat: In this case, the temperature goes up to 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), the perfect temperature for quickly cooking a perfect pizza. It can also be used for other purposes as a more general use oven.
What we didn’t like
- Price: Price is a bit higher than average
The rest of the competitions
8. Cuisinart CPO-600 Alfrescamore
Why you’ll love it:
If you want a more modern looking pizza oven, Cuisinart is the way to go. While a bit more expensive than some other models, it also has quite a few great features.
What we liked
- Overall Design: This is a great pizza oven with a design almost like a panini press or something similar. It’s easy to move and use, with a pair of handy handles and a surprisingly steady base, a spacious interior (143 square inches of cooking space, enough for a 13” pizza). While not my absolute favorite, it’s quite nice to have.
- Accessories: This comes with everything you need to get started, from a cordierite stone to a pizza peel, and even a smoker cup.
- Quick Assembly: Snaps together in under 10 minutes if following the easy to read instructions.
What we didn’t like
- Price: This one runs a bit more than the top models, likely because of the second drawback.
- Electric: This one is an electric oven, with a 15, 000 BTU burner. While electric ovens are obviously nice enough to have (I use one every day), it makes it unsuited for both camping (like the propane models), and less appealing as a dedicated backyard oven, given that wood fire is so much better for cooking with.
- Weight: It boasts itself as being lightweight “under 40 lbs”. This actually makes it a bit heavier than most of the ovens on this list, oddly enough.
- Ventilation: While not terrible, this oven lacks any dedicated ventilation method, and that can lead to some moister pizzas. I list this as a half-complaint, as some people like a softer crust.
9. ROCCBOX Portable Outdoor Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love it:
This is a great, if flawed and expensive model. It’s a bit hard to gauge the quality with this mixed bag.
What we liked
- Tripod: I really like the height of this one in the feet. It makes it a bit easier to get pizzas in and out of the oven, and having 3 legs instead of 4 makes it a bit steadier on uneven ground. The legs are also retractable, making it a bit easier to move around when you need to.
- Fuel Source: This one can run on both gas and wood, giving you a bit of extra versatility in cooking. Wood fired cooking is great for many things, but for just as many more, propane or natural gas burners work just as well, and are way easier to use. It’s great for quickly cooking baked goods you don’t necessarily want a smoky flavor to, or vegetables.
- Thermometer: Thermometer is accurate and conveniently placed on the exterior of the oven.
- Shell: The outer shell is silicone lined. This serves three purposes, all great: it gives the shell a bit more protection, improved heat retention, and (as a result of that second one) makes it less likely to burn you. Plus it makes the exterior look a lot nicer than plain unpainted steel.
What we didn’t like
- Price: This is the big deal breaker for me. The quality is undeniable; in pure performance, design, and construction it’s probably the best on this list. But this thing is over twice as expensive as every other model on the list, making it difficult to recommend for anything short of the dedicated pizza enthusiast; even then, I think our winner is still plenty good enough.
10. Forno Venetzia FVP200R Pronto 200
Why you’ll love it:
This is a pretty great built-in model from Forno Venetzia, with a high price, though it’s relatively reasonable for what you get.
What we liked
- Overall Design and Materials: This is a sizable, well-shaped built-in pizza oven. This needs to be installed, but the increased quality of the individual materials more than makes up for the increased hassle and cost. The domed roof and outer shell is thick and sturdy, with a great chimney. The steel is thick and well insulated, with a quite nice oak handle, and the thermometer is conveniently placed and accurate.
- Size: This oven is huge, being large enough to cook two personal pizzas at once (roughly 12 inches apiece). You have 480 square inches of cooking space to work with, which is, to put it in perspective, about the size of the average “tube-shaped” grill.
- Insulation: The steel shell is double-insulated with ceramic coating, massively increasing its insulating properties. It can reach very high temperatures as a result, and cooks food swiftly and thoroughly. The chimney can optionally be stoppered if you want an extra smoky flavor as well, allowing for “low and slow” cooking over long periods of time for smoked meats and similar recipes.
What we didn’t like
- Price: While a fair price for what you get, it should be noted that this model costs about 10 times what our winner costs. It’s worth it, but only for someone who really wants a dedicated outdoor oven. This makes it hard to recommend, but also hard to deny it’s a very good oven, and it would be difficult to drive the price any lower, so it’s fair for what it is.
11. Alfresco Countertop Pizza Oven
Why you’ll love it:
This is more if you want a full-sized outdoor oven than something just for pizza. It’s a huge investment from Alfresco Grills, but quite good.
What we liked
- Size: This gives you a huge 30 x 30 x 24 (width, depth, height) area to use. That totals up to 456 square inches of cooking space, enough for a 14-inch pizza or several other smaller items at once.
- Construction: The shell is high-quality stainless steel and very durable, which is good because this oven is not at all portable. It’s going to be a permanent fixture in your backyard. The ventilation is arranged so as to keep the control panel cool at all times, which is great.
- Heat: This oven heats up to a massive 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and keeps that heat locked in, while venting enough moisture to crisp the food up nicely.
- Light: A built-in halogen light lets you see the interior to tell what’s cooking and how well, even when you’re cooking in the dark (which is probably going to be a lot of the time).
What we didn’t like
- Price: The price for this oven is frankly insane. It costs 20 to 25 TIMES what our winner costs, and I really don’t think it’s worth it for what is, in all honesty, just an oven. You could buy a whole range top stove and oven combo, in high quality, for something in the ballpark of $1000 to $2000, much less over three times that, for something that is going to be generally far less versatile of a cooking device. If the bottom product here wasn’t also bafflingly expensive and just an inferior model of another product, it would be a shoe-in for the worst I’ve come across for this kind of product.
12. Pizzacraft PC6500 PizzaQue
Why you’ll love it:
This is a great “camp-oven” style pizza oven.
What we liked
- Propane-powered: While wood-fired foods obviously taste a lot better, the convenience of propane can’t be overstated. This makes this pizza oven perfect for taking on camping trips or to other remote locales where electricity is unavailable, and when you may not have the space to store something that burns wood.
- Size: While compact in size and relatively lightweight at only 25 lbs, it has enough room to cook a 14” pizza or other foods of similar size. It’s surprisingly spacious for such a small looking package , and works for pretty much any food you could want (within reason).
- Fast Cooking: Cooks a good sized pizza in about 6 minutes, and heats up in only 15. While not as blindingly fast as other models, this is still very good for a machine of this size and price. Getting food for the whole camping group in about 20 minutes isn’t half bad.
- Price: This model comes at a great price, being about half what you’d pay for the top model.
What we didn’t like
- Lack of Accessories: This model doesn’t come with any of the usual accessories, besides the cordierite pizza stone, meaning you’ll have to shell out a bit extra for a pizza peel and similar necessary accessories.
- Heat: This one only heats up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit which besides making the cooking slower, also affects the quality of the food a bit. Not too much, but enough to be noticeable as compared to a better wood-fired model.
13. Pizzacraft PC6000 Pizzeria Pronto
Why you’ll love it:
This is a solid budget option from Pizzacraft, in a nicely compact package.
What we liked
- Propane Powered: This is another great camp oven that runs on propane, making it easily portable and able to be set up pretty much anywhere, without the tedium of gathering wood or a reliance on electricity.
- Lightweight and Portable: A compact design and light 26 lb weight makes this oven very easy to move around and store in camping gear and other packed bags where space might be at a premium.
- Overall Design: The venting is very good on this one, with the overall dome being great at trapping in the right amount of heat while venting the necessary amount of moisture to keep the food from getting soggy. It cooks quickly and is easy to use, making it a very good product for beginners and travelers.
What we didn’t like
- Heat: A max heat of 700 degrees is a bit below what you’d expect for a full sized outdoor pizza oven. It’s unavoidable with the change in fuel, but is definitely a downside as compared to our winner or similar portable wood fired ovens.
FINAL VERDICT
The Ooni Fyra 12 is by far the best bang for your buck here. It’s a great wood-fired model with a good design and a quite reasonable price. If you want a camp stove, the PIzzacraft Pizzaque. The rest of the options are going to depend on your budget.
The Forno Venetzia is great but expensive, and a lot of the others are way too expensive for what they offer. Overall, the pizza ovens on this list are fairly good, but many are severely flawed, it’s all about how you rate those flaws and how much merit you pull from them for it.
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Are outdoor pizza ovens worth it?
Yes. Choosing the best outdoor pizza oven is easier than you might think, with a fairly limited number of special features to look for. Pizza ovens are simple devices and are carried by their raw performance, which is mostly evident in the construction and materials than anything else. The better materials it’s made of, and the better it’s put together, the better the oven.
Insulated Construction
In general steel is the preferred material for basic construction. It’s sturdy, relatively lightweight, and has decent heat retention. Better models will have an outer layer of some other material to improve insulation, with silicone and ceramic being the materials of choice. The former will severely reduce heat radiation and make it a bit safer to touch, while ceramic will add an extra layer of retention (but it will still be very hot on the exterior, as ceramic is an excellent heat conductor).
Size and Portability
Being lightweight is something important to note. Even many excellent pizza ovens are designed to be relatively portable especially the indoor pizza makers, and the average weight is about 30 lbs, or even less in some cases. Less weight will also make it easier to set on softer ground, like grassy back yards, clay, or soil instead of needing to be placed on some kind of concrete table or car port.
The design should be domed and allow for great ventilation via a chimney or smoke port. This is very important, as you don’t want pizza to be TOO smoky or moist. The crust should come out crisp and lightly charred and smoky, not blackened with soot or soggy to the touch.
Better ventilation without sacrificing heat retention is the best way to achieve this, and each model has its own methods. The general rule of thumb is to stay away from anything that thinks simply venting smoke out the front is sufficient; by the time it rolls out of the domed and lidded interior the smoke has already severely flavored the pizza.
Price
The price is a major thing to consider. Many excellent backyard pizza ovens (even our top choice) are quite reasonably priced at, or below $300. This makes them quite affordable, especially if you intend to use it regularly and get your money’s worth. Some models are significantly more expensive, and most of these are built-in models (which require a dedicated countertop and must be installed, never to be moved again).
These built-in ovens are high performance but exorbitantly expensive, making them poor options for all but the most enthusiastic outdoor chefs, and even then a built-in grill or other cookery range is likely to be more practical and cost-efficient in the long run.
How does outdoor pizza oven work
For first time buyers, a pizza oven can seem like a difficult tool to use. In reality, pizza ovens are easy to use, and once you get the hang of it, pies from your own pizza oven are much better than ordering a pie from your local restaurant.
To cook a pizza in a wood-fired oven, you need a temperature of at least 800°F. Keep in mind that if you have a thicker crust, this higher temperature will allow for faster cooking. Thin crusts can easily burn at temperatures higher than 800°F.
DIY Outdoor Pizza Oven
If you have the time and skills then building one is the perfect option for you.
Can You Grill in a Pizza Oven?
“If you want to try grilling in your pizza oven, instead of firing up both your grill and the pizza oven, you can jump right in. Most pizza oven owners set a rack over the hot coals, and use their pizza oven much like a charcoal grill. The heat will make perfect grill marks, and searing the meat makes it juicy and delicious.”
If you were contemplating a pizza oven, but were hesitant because it seemed single purpose, rest assured your money will be well spent. Despite their name, pizza ovens are a great tool for cooking a wide range of foods, and can even help you expand your kitchen skills.
Yes you can roast, bake and grill.
See also: What Else Can be Cooked in an Outdoor Pizza Oven?
How to Make Easy Pizza Sauce
It’s easy.
It’s not hard to make a high-quality and tasty pizza sauce in the comfort of your own kitchen. You only really need a few basic ingredients, including canned tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, to make a simple and delicious sauce. If you want to add seasoning to taste, you probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen already.
If you have a blender or food mixer, you can produce delicious results in under five minutes. Even if you’re following the old-school method of simmering and thickening your sauce in a pan, the entire process is straightforward.
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By: Jim B.
Title: Best Outdoor Pizza Ovens: Top 13 Picks to Impress Your Guests
Sourced From: www.grillbabygrill.com/best-outdoor-pizza-ovens-reviews/
Published Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2022 03:47:26 +0000
