Ooni Koda 12 Review: Sixty Seconds Is Possible, Three Minutes Is Better

The headline feature, and the lab that told you to ignore it

Ooni sells this on the sixty-second pizza. TechGearLab measured a ninety second cook at full heat, then recommended around three minutes as producing better results.

That is an unusual thing for a testing lab to say about a product's main selling point, and it is the most useful sentence in any of these reviews.

A minute at 900°F blisters the crust before the centre has set and before the toppings have had a chance to cook. Mackenzie Fritz ran into exactly that, finding that watery vegetables such as peppers and onions left liquid sitting on top of the pizza because there was not enough time for it to drive off.

Turn the gas down. Take three minutes. The oven will still be doing something a domestic oven physically cannot.

Where the heat is, and where it is not

One burner, at the back.

All For Pizza states the consequence plainly: the front of the stone is always cooler than the back, and a turning peel is needed to rotate the pizza through the cook for an even crust.

Mackenzie Fritz's routine gives you the practical shape of it. Forty-five seconds a side for the first two turns, then fifteen seconds for each subsequent one.

No peel comes in the box. Budget for a launching peel and a turning peel, because without them this is a much harder oven to use than it needs to be.

How hot, exactly

The two sources that measured are about 150°F apart.

TechGearLab: stone at 755°F when optimal, dropping to 710°F on successive pizzas, with the interior averaging 778°F against a thermometer that stops at 800.

All For Pizza: stone around 900°F after fifteen minutes, oven around 950°F.

Both used fifteen minutes of preheat. The likely explanation is where the reading was taken and whether a pizza had just come off, since the stone gives up a lot of heat to each base that lands on it, which is exactly what TechGearLab's 710°F figure for later pizzas shows.

The outside gets hot too

All For Pizza measured the carbon steel shell at 350°F after three quarters of an hour at working temperature.

That is not a defect. It is what an uninsulated steel box full of 900°F air does. But it is worth knowing before you set it up on a table where people are standing, and it deserves the same clearance you would give a lit barbecue.

What it gives up

Flavour, according to All For Pizza's main criticism. Gas produces no smoke, so none of the character a wood-fired oven contributes ends up in the crust.

In exchange you get an oven that lights instantly, holds a temperature you set with a dial, arrives assembled, folds its legs and weighs about twenty pounds. Mackenzie Fritz keeps hers in the boot of a car.

For most people cooking pizza at home a few times a month, that trade is the right way round.