Home style pizza

[Too Tall]

Nice pie. Your child appears to be in another world ;)

[bigbill]

For pizza ovens, is there any advantage of wood fire over gas fire? With gas, light it off, get hot, make pizzas, and shut off the gas. Wood adds complexity, but is it worth it?

[rwsaunders]

For pizza ovens, is there any advantage of wood fire over gas fire? With gas, light it off, get hot, make pizzas, and shut off the gas. Wood adds complexity, but is it worth it?

I don’t own one but I’ve used our friends’ pellet version a dozen times or so…go for the gas imho.

[robin3mj]

I went from a gas version to the electric Ooni which can be used indoors and has a wider ranger of temperature controls.

Already have a smoker so the idea for the pizza oven is that it’s relatively quick (aside from 24-48 hours dough prep) and no need to fuss with getting the wood fire up to temps.

[dgaddis]

For pizza ovens, is there any advantage of wood fire over gas fire? With gas, light it off, get hot, make pizzas, and shut off the gas. Wood adds complexity, but is it worth it?

Cooking this hot and fast you’re not getting any “smoke” flavor, so IMO, no, it’s not worth it. Gas is easy, predictable, and repeatable. I went with gas and am glad I did.

[robin3mj]

A 25 degree day and an orphaned dough ball in the freezer seemed like a good opportunity to fire up the oven.

San Marzano tomatoes, sauteed bell peppers, burrata, basil. That's it.
Overcooked by about 30 seconds, but tasty nonetheless.

[twowheels]

Cooking this hot and fast you’re not getting any “smoke” flavor, so IMO, no, it’s not worth it. Gas is easy, predictable, and repeatable. I went with gas and am glad I did.

I've learned a lot over my years of cooking thousands of pies. I agree that wood fired pizza is more lore and romanticism than a process that yields a better tasting pizza. While large (think over 250kg) wood fired ovens can be fun to use, small wood fired ovens are extremely difficult to use effectively. Frankly, IMO they are completely ineffective.

I've had multiple smaller pizza ovens including the supposedly excellent ooni koda 16. I found that it lacked the necessary ability to retain enough heat to reliably cook excellent pizzas. IMO, it is just too small and is therefore hard to hold appropriate temperature through the cooking cycle. The flame is also too close to your pizza. As a result, it is easy to get undercooked or burned pizzas and very difficult to make perfect pies.

I sold the ooni for 50cents on the dollar and was happy to get rid of it. I replaced it with a wood and natural gas fired gozney dome. The dome is a superb oven.

Lacking a natural gas hookup for my initial several weeks of ownership, I broke it in with wood. Like any wood fired oven, it takes patience and time. You need to build a fire, get the oven to your favored temperature, let the fire and coals die to the appropriate size and temperature, and then cook your pies.

Cooking with wood did not impart any smoky flavor. And, with wood, you really are unable to adjust your cooking temperature on the fly in any meaningful way. It is also tricky to cook multiple pies because of the way the temperature diminishes.

Once I got my natural gas line installed, I never cooked with wood again. I anticipate only cooking with wood if my gas service is interrupted.

The advantage of cooking with gas is I know I can reliably and repeatedly get the cooking floor to the mid 700 degree temps I prefer in about 30 minutes, and then I can quickly and easily lower the flame to where I like it. I can also adjust flame size while my pies are cooking based on the how the crust is cooking (think leopard spots).

My advice--

Skip wood unless you are building or buying a massive oven and have a lot of time and patience;
But at least a gozney dome sized oven. In fact, just buy a dome. Its the perfect home oven;
Just get the natural gas or propane fired oven and save yourself $4-500.

Thank me later.

PS, I know this is an opinionated post but there is a lot of BS available everywhere re pizza and ovens and this advice was very hard earned.

[dgaddis]

More of the mostly the same.