daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Mariko had an in-person pizza class tonight, which meant it was a good time to fire up the Ooni pizza oven! So much fun to bake pies in this little gadget. The bubbling cheese and crust is so exciting.
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. ♥️🍕
I ate too much… but it was so good! Pictured above is a “meat-lover’s” pizza, but there was a second pizza with tomato, onion, mushroom and sausage. It was also excellent! ❤️🍕
Pizza is definitely a contender for the “if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life” question.
Today we had two families over for an in-person pizza lesson. Usually, Mariko teaches via Zoom but today it was a special visit with friends. Lots of fun! And of course, the pizza was yummy. 😀🍕
❤🍕
