I’m just going to jump right in here and say it: the first pizza I ever cooked in this compact, portable outdoor pizza oven was the best pizza I've made in my life. Until the six others I cooked up in rapid succession following that first pie—things got kind of subjective based on the topping choices. But each and every pizza came out of the Ooni outdoor pizza oven with a crust boasting that perfect blend of air pockets, a bit of char in some places, and doughy bites in others.
And for the record, we have made a lot of pizzas; scores if it’s not hundreds. My wife makes a mean dough and sauce (both from scratch) I’m pretty damn good at mincing and prepping ingredients, and our perfectly good oven can reach around 500 degrees, which can cook up a pretty good pizza in 10 minutes or so.
But our Ooni Frya? That thing heats up to over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, features a searing hot ceramic plate on the bottom, and a roof over which lick tongues of hot flame. This is why it literally takes less than a minute to cook a perfect pizza in there—the heat.
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Now, for your reference, the company makes a number of different ovens. Our is the Ooni Frya 12 Wood Pellet Pizza Oven, and from the end of this paragraph on, know that I’ll be speaking about that unit exclusively. But you do have several other options, such as larger ovens that can make 16-inch pies, gas-fired ovens (as in propane), and multi-fuel options that can use gas or wood and charcoal. But our Frya 12 works so well I’m not even tempted to try the others.
OK, now back to the heat, which is created by a relatively small wood pellet-burning insert that pops into the back of the oven and can self-feed itself more pellets via a hopper you top off once. The pellets light up fast with the aid of any store-bought chemical-free fire starter and within less than 15 minutes the oven will be up around 900 degrees. At that intense heat, it really does take less than a minute to cook a disc of raw dough topped with sauce, cheese, and toppings into a perfect pizza. The only things to note are that you need to rotate the pizza once as it cooks, so really think of this as two 30-second cooking sessions, and if you are cooking more than two or three pizzas, you need to wait about three or four minutes after the second or third to let the oven heat back up.
All told, once you heat up your Ooni Frya, you are a minute away from a pizza so tasty you’ll never need to visit some brick oven-touting pizza parlor again. As for the sudden uptick in visits from friends, family, and neighbors you’ll experience? Well, can’t help you there.
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