Ooni Karu 12

Our newest cooking gadget is the Ooni Karu 12 pizza oven. It’s a portable oven which uses charcoal, wood, or gas (with extra attachment). Today I used a combination of lump coal and wood, and the pizzas turned out pretty good!

The first pizza was a little scorched because I didn’t know how quickly an 850°F /454°C oven cooks a pizza! It only took about 20 seconds before the side that was nearest the back of the oven started burning. The next pizza was better, with a slightly cooler temperature (I bought an infrared thermometer from Harbor Freight) and more diligent rotating of the pizza. Our third pizza turned out almost perfect which means I am getting the hang of using the Ooni.

What made it a bit challenging was the fact that our normal pizza peel is too big for the Ooni Karu 12, so we had to improvise with a foil-covered cutting board and parchment paper to launch the pizza. FYI, parchment paper and pizza ovens do NOT mix. 😂

I also was using my regular barbecue grill spatula to rotate the pizza, which was okay, but not optimal. But we have an appropriately sized pizza peel on the way, and I think I will just practice with the spatula a bit more.

So, how did the pizza taste? Honestly, it didn’t really taste that much better than our regular oven-baked pizza. Maybe I need to use different charcoal and/or wood? This time I used oak lump coal and hickory wood. I’m not sure how much a difference it would make since there isn’t hardly any smoke.

Anyways, I am looking forward to making more pizza using the Ooni Karu 12. It’s a lot of fun, especially controlling the flame using pieces of hard wood. And seeing the dough puff up and the top of the pizza bubbling is really exciting. ♥️🍕