Ooni Fyra 12 wood-fired pizza oven review

I thought my home-baked pizza was pretty decent. I make sourdough bases with my starter discard, and my daughter and I tag-team to make and bake four pizzas every fortnight.

Our domestic oven has held us back though. It just doesn’t get hot enough. I’ve tried to justify building an outdoor pizza oven, but the idea has never taken off. I suspect the chore of getting a wood fire going each time would become old quickly. I fear the oven would become a big garden ornament, with a lot of sunk cost and effort.

First impressions

I was genuinely excited about getting my hands on the Ooni Fyra 12. It’s fuelled with wood pellets and Ooni promise all the good stuff – a high-temperature cook for a crispy but chewy, wood-flavoured crust – with none of the faff of creating and maintaining a fire.

In the Fyra 12, you add wood pellets to a hopper, and they are then gravity-fed into its fire box. The oven goes from cold to a claimed (up to) 500°C in 15 minutes, with no Bear Grylls’ fire-starting skill required, just a firelighter and a match.

I didn’t measure that temperature, but as I managed to set the olive oil on a garlic pizza bread on fire (olive oil auto-ignites at 435°C), I’d say it’s mighty hot inside.

A series of baffles inside the oven direct flames evenly along the roof over the pizza and out of a chimney. The Fyra 12 prefers a sheltered cooking spot but, fortunately for me living in Wellington, it’s pretty tolerant of a blustery day.

I used Pit Boss BBQ Competition Blend hardwood pellets ($40 for a 9kg bag), but any 100% hardwood pellets would work. My regular four-pizza cook used a bit more than a kilogram.

Making pizza in the Fyra 12 doesn’t need much skill, but it does depend on preparation and timing. It’s a steep learning curve. My first two pizzas stuck to the peel and were a disaster. The next eight came out in various stages of burnt. But pizza 11 onwards have been perfect (with the odd exception).

Is it easy to use?

There are two timing challenges to overcome.

1. The raw base goes onto a pizza peel covered in a generous layer of flour. You have to work swiftly adding sauce and toppings. Delay too much or overload the base with toppings and you risk the pizza sticking to the peel.

2. When the pizza is in the oven, you can’t get distracted. At best you have a minute before you need to turn the pizza, or the side nearest the fire box at the back of the oven will burn.

The secret of good Ooni pizza is organisation. Before cooking, I prep the toppings for each pizza, and make sure I have everything I need outside near the oven. I use a timer for the cooking – a minute passes by very quickly. The door has a neat viewing hole, so you can watch the mozzarella bubble away. The door isn’t fixed to the oven – it hangs on the top when cooking, and on the base when accessing the pizza. It’s very easy to use.

My family reckon the pizza is good, even suggesting it’s some of the best they’ve had. That’s likely because they get to choose their favourite toppings – proper wood-fired pizza with pineapple is hard to find (probably for a good reason)!

Post cooking, the Fyra 12 is easy to look after. It cools down in about an hour. There’s very little clean-up. Any lost toppings are cremated and can be swept out (the base stone is removeable) and the fire box can be removed to tip out the ash. The Fyra 12 packs down into a carry cover, with a bag for the chimney and pellet hopper once they’re removed, making it portable and easy to store away.

It’s not cheap at $600 for the Fyra 12 (before you even add a pizza peel and pellets into the equation). But it’s been such a hit with my family, I’ve bought it off Consumer and I’ll be outside every other weekend over the winter (weather permitting) making pizza.

Paul’s sourdough pizza base

It makes four 12-inch bases.

Ingredients

• 450g high-protein bread or 00 grade flour
• 1.5 cups sourdough starter discard*
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp dried yeast
• ¾ cup of lukewarm water (plus a little more if the dough looks dry).

Cooking instructions

1. Put all the ingredients in the bowl of a food mixer.
2. Mix with the dough hook on medium speed for about 10 minutes, until no dough sticks to the bowl. You’ll see the dough go from loose, shaggy and stuck to the bowl, to tight, stretchy and clinging to the dough hook. If it looks dry, add a little more water – but not too much or it’ll be too wet to make the bases. If that happens, add a bit more flour.
3. Leave dough to rise in a warm place for 2 to 3 hours. I prefer to transfer the dough to a ceramic bowl and cover it with a dinner plate for this part. Any place that’s around 25°C seems about right. I use an airing cupboard.
4. Half an hour before cooking, turn the dough out onto a well-floured worktop. Divide into four, knead lightly and form into balls. If it’s sticky, add more flour as you knead until it doesn’t stick to things.
5. When ready to bake, stretch, spin or roll each ball into a base shape.

*If you don’t bake sourdough bread and hence don’t have a jar of discard in the fridge, this recipe will be no use to you. The Ooni oven comes with a good non-sourdough base recipe that works well.

Paul’s pizza sauce recipe

Ingredients

• 500g (about 1.5 cans) crushed tomatoes or passata
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 3 cloves garlic (crushed or chopped)
• A dash of olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Dash of balsamic vinegar (optional)

Cooking instructions

1. Gently fry the garlic and oregano in the olive oil, using a medium heat.
2. Add the crushed tomatoes or passata, salt and pepper.
3. Leave to simmer for an hour.
4. Towards the end of the simmer, stir in a dash of balsamic for a nice tang.
5. Let cool before using on pizza.