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Comment by stevievee | Hacker News Reader

For a quick pizza, I use a "Ooni" pizza oven and the results have been great. It's relatively cheap and you can get the temperatures you are looking for. I joined their first kickstarter and have been buying their ovens ever since:

https://uk.ooni.com/collections/shop-all/products/ooni-koda

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This is a good cheap alternative: https://www.amazon.com/Breville-Crispy-Crust-Pizza-BREBPZ600... It looks like it might be discontinued although there is a similar one by another brand on amazon. Its major drawback is its only good for a pizza as large as 10-12 inches and if your pizza gets a large high bubble it can touch the upper element. I have made much better pizza with it then my standard kitchen oven. I do want to build a brick oven in the backyard when I get a chance some day though.

For years I've dreamed of building a wood-fired pizza oven, or buying one of the cast kits from https://www.fornobravo.com/. But this looks way easier and cheaper.

How long does a gas cylinder last?

I've got the big ooni oven, and use it pretty much daily for 1-5 pizzas. It takes 20-25 minutes to heat up, then maybe 90 seconds to cook a pizza. The gas burner states it uses about 450g per hour on max, which seems to tally with what I get out of a 13kg propane bottle, which is in the region of 45 -60 days. The propane tank costs €34 to refill here.

edit: I also dreamed for years of building a wood-fired oven, but I'm totally happy with the gas one. The way I can make myself a pizza in 25 minutes start to finish is hard to argue with. People ask me if the lack of smoke in the oven makes for a subpar pizza, but in my opinion it makes no difference. The oven is so hot that any smoke in a wood-fired oven is well above the pizza. It's just the heat you need.

I have a green-egg[1] style ceramic grill that works really well for pizza. Wood-fired, and can get up to a pretty good temperature. I use a pizza stone in it.

1: The exact brand is a Kamado ceramic grill.

Cool, but why do those cost like a Rolls Royce? Just a big ceramic ball, but priced like its made of gold.

With the Green Egg, you’re paying for a brand name for sure. The Kamado is definitely not cheap, but it’s typically around half the price.

What kind of pizza stone do you use? I have a green egg, but have never made pizza in it.

I use an Emile Henry pizza stone.

My parents have a wood fired, and I have an Ooni Koda. I can compare:

- The base is better on the wood fired oven. The Kodas stone doesn't get hot enough. I've read recommendations to replace the stone with a steel, because it's more conductive.

- The koda heats up in a timescale I'm ok with. Like, 20 minutes. For the wood fired oven, it usually takes about 2 hours for the oven itself to be hot enough, but you really want the oven to be completely saturated with heat. This can take over 4 hours.

- I've had the Koda about 6 months now, and used it about 20 times. It hasn't really registered on the meter attached to my 13 kg gas bottle, and this is the only thing I use it for. I'm not at all concerned about the gas usage, even when its used a refill is cheap.

- The wood oven, in contrast, goes through wood significantly faster than our wood burning stove.

- I can do more with the wood oven, like bread, or roasts. The profile of the Koda means my normal cookware doesn't fit, and while I'm ok with buying Ooni's low profile cast iron, I just haven't done it yet. That said, while I like the idea of cooking food under real fire with smoke and intense direct heat, I don't see that with essentially a big gas oven. I have other tools.

- I can take the Koda anywhere, but when my parents move house there's no chance the wood oven moves.

Is there risk of the steel damaging the Koda?

I had a piece of steel on a propane grill before, and the lid of the grill warped pretty significantly from it.

Have you tried using it e.g. for baking bread, grilling vegetables or similar? I'm not a fan of having one-purpose devices.

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