While I can’t say that I have ever disliked pizza from any restaurant, I do think there are degrees of “good”. A few years ago, I was making pizza quite often on my Big Green Egg. However, the setup, waiting on it to heat up, and ruining and replacing burnt gaskets, etc. was always a pain and part of the reason I haven’t made a pizza on the Egg in a while.
One other downside is the time and effort to make dough from scratch. Unfortunately, not much I can do about that. Yes, there are places that sell dough balls already made and it’s great in a pinch, but not the same as making it at home.
So why not just buy pizza? This has a lot to do with knowing the ingredients, making it how I want, and experimenting with different combos. I also think it saves money in the long run given the cost of pizza and pizza delivery these days. The piling on of delivery fees on top of expecting a tip and pizza gets quite expensive. Even eating it out is pricey with the tip, a couple overpriced beers, etc.
So, my thought right now is to possibly buying an outdoor pizza oven. This would take a lot of the hassle out of the outdoor cooking process. If I could make that side easier, I could make more pizza dough with each batch and know I would use them, which would give me more bang for the buck each time I made a batch.
So which oven? I have pretty much decided on the ooni Karu 16. This will allow the most flexibility for a few reasons. First, it’s bigger than its 12 inch counterparts, so more room to cook breads and other things that can benefit from the high heat. Secondly, the larger size means I can make larger or smaller pizzas and they will be easier to rotate in the oven.
This model uses multiple fuels, too. This means on most weeknights, I can quickly make pizza with the propane adapter. On the weekends, I can use wood or coal as fuel and turn out a more New Haven style apizza.
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Right now, we have too much going on to spend any time with it, but things will ease up in a few weeks, so I will hold off buying it for the moment. However, I know it will eventually be in my backyard churning out spectacular pizza with the ingredients that I want to use. With pizza being my favorite food, the idea of having a pizza oven available is pretty darn compelling!
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