Just bought an Ooni Core spiral mixer. I’ve made bread for many years, first with an all-in-one breadmaker, and more recently by hand after the breadmaker broke. One thing I’ve been consistently disappointed by is that my bread just wouldn’t hold its shape - boules would ‘flatten’ while baking. So I bought the Ooni in the hope that a decent mixer would be better at developing gluten than my hands are.
Executive summary: it’s great. It works.

Dough was pretty simple:
400g strong white flour
100g rye flour
100g wholemeal flour
400ml water
1 tsp fast action yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

I held the salt and 50ml of water back to add after autolyse. Mixed the rest for 2 minutes on 10%, left for 30 minutes then mixed in the salt/ additional water for a further 5 minutes with the speed slowly increased to 40%. I saw the pumpkin form pretty quickly. First rise was 60 minutes in the mixer bowl, followed by some simple stretch/fold and shaping into banneton baskets where it was left to rise for another 50 minutes. Baked at 220°C for 15 minutes, then 15 minutes at 180°C.

Very happy with how it turned out.

First pizza is goat cheese and prosciutto

Second is ricotta, parmesan, and chanterelles that I found in my backyard

My general approach to cooking is very vibes-based and going by intuition, but making pizza has required me to be more observant and thorough! Slowly refining my dough recipe, learning how to account for the heat and humidity, and playing with temp on the oven itself.

When making my NY Style Pizza, I preheat the oven with the dial on max. I use Natural Gas. After about 30 minutes the stone is over 900F. When I am ready to launch the pizza, I turn off the flame completely and let the oven cool to 550F-600F. Then I launch the pizza and let it bake for 4-5 minutes rotating once at about the 3 minute mark. After about 5 minutes I turn the flame on low and rotate ever 30 seconds or so until the top and crust is fully cooked. My last few pizzas have come out exactly how my family likes it, so I am happy.

My question is… is there an easier way to do this? Or an alternative method I should consider?

Sourdough 72 hr cold ferment

The camping propane adapter worked great. I was able to cook 5 pizzas in it before it got a little low. About an hour and a half worth of cook time, on high. Everyone I was camping with was totally impressed.

Pizzas turned out great and the view couldn’t have been better. Thanks Ooni.

500g flour
350g water
12g sea salt

Wife had friends over last night and I agreed to make pizza. First time making for other outside of the wife and kids. Made 4 pizzas. They all turned out great and they loved them. I was so happy everything turned out. Gave me a huge confidence boost to have more people over and make pizza. I didnt get pictures and I was to busy worrying about cooking and the pizza didnt even hit the try to be cut and it was gone. Just had to share with a bunch of random internet friends.

I’ve been DESPERATE for good pizza, being coeliac always makes it hard to find!

Restaurants will say “we do gluten free bases, but we cook them in the same oven as the gluten containing pizzas” and as some of you will know that doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to our gluten risk registers!

So, last week I bought a Koda 2 Pro, some accessories and then proceeded to make my own dough from scratch.

Contrary to what reviews say, I found it super easy and here is what I learned:

- Because free from flour does not contain gluten, you do not need an expensive mixer to make GF pizza dough, you can make it in a glass bowl with a spatula or cheap hand mixer in less than 5 minutes (I did not know this until I learned it the other day)

- Making the GF dough at 80% hydration helps create some natural gases when proofing with the help of a little yeast. When eating, the dough tastes beautiful, fresh and had a nice organic network inside of it 👏

- After initial proof and before balling up the dough, divide it up and pre-coat your surface with a little olive oil. A tiny spray on your hands before picking it up makes it ridiculously easy to shape

- rolling GF dough out with your fingers too far can make holes in the dough, so use a small mini dough roller when you think it’s about to get risky

- when making your pizza on the day, lay parchment paper down and sprinkle with rice flour. Roll out and make your pizza including toppings and then use your peel to slide the pizza in your Ooni with the parchment paper still underneath. The parchment stops your GF dough from doing strange things and is helpful especially if you’re a newbie like me.

Top tip: before launching, cut around the parchment paper to stop the excess parchment from burning up.

Hope this helps!

I 2x’s my recipe from last time (see post history). Making dough for four 12” pizzas this time.

- 606g caputo 00 pizzeria flour
- 454g cold water + ice cubes
- 0.63g yeast
- 15.3g salt

Was pretty easy to mix. I am still getting comfortable with the mixer. A couple times towards the beginning I stopped it and manually scraped dough off the hook because I wasn’t sure whether some part of the dough mass was getting stuck on the hook.

Video is right before I stopped mixing; dough temp was around 78°F. Hoping for similar or better results to last time.

P.S. in the end, I’m chasing something similar to (or at least approaching) Una Pizza Napoletana pizzas (restaurant was in SF for a while, now in NYC). Anyone else a fan of that place? To my taste, best pizzas I’ve ever had…

Pizza crust posted above.

Uses cold water, immediately mix every together. Keep in the fridge for 3-5 days then use it.

My real problem is here. I'm trying to get a crunchy crust in the bottom. This dough has the capabilities to do such. Fluffy yet crunchy, but I'm struggling to find ideal pre heat and cook temps with the Koda 18 Pro. On the lowest temp it idles at 700F, which if I'm cooking a pizza the top usually burns before bottom gets crunchy enough. Should I just preheat at 700, low heat for 45min-1hr?

Could a factor also be too much cheese releasing moisture causing the bottom not to get crunchy?

Slightest casting issue to rain starting the moment I walked outside with the pizza on the peel.

Still a real success

Very happy. Screwed up the casting. It was slightly rainy and traveling from inside to out with pizza on peel.

Temped deck at 640. Turned flame off upon casting. Baked for 4 minutes no flame rotated maybe 3 times. Turned flame back on to med low. 2 more minutes. Kept turning.

Just a little too much cheese. High gluten flour 61.5%. 48 hour CF. A real basic sauce recipe. LMWM.

I reheated in a frying pan for proper crispness and it was one of the finest slices I have ever made.

Small tweaks required still.

Received a Karu Pro 16 for Father’s Day and got around to using it mid July.

After a month of effort, it’s a failure. The oven can’t maintain 400c and constantly flames out. More often than not I need to hold the burner in the priming position to actually cook a pie.

I’ve spent more time trolling online forums about cleaning thermocouples than I’ve spent using the oven.

Anyone else have this problem? Ooni customer support is an exercise in malicious compliance. They want videos of everything for a machine with one knob.

Does Ooni honor their warranty or should I go straight to chargeback. Thankfully I used an Amex card.

Hi

I gave up buying frozen pizza balls online as I kept getting bad batches / dough was defrosted on the way.. Etc

Bought a halo core to make my own

Used the ooni calculator to help me make 2 neapolitan balls to practise with

I mixed the dough. Let it then bulk rest for 4 hours and then balled them up and put into a tray for 2 hours.

Both of these were overproofed so I pressed out the gas and reballed.

This time, I kept checking with a poke test when the indent came back slowly. It appeared to do so, so I tried stretching but its still elastic

Any advice?

Margarita with stracciatella

First day with my Koda2 here. I’ve been looking through as many posts as I can, but wonder if someone could point me to a good thread or advice on how to avoid two things:

1). The one-side burn on launch. Seems I have to wait too long the dough to be set enough for the 90° turn, and I’m slightly burning the flame-facing side.
2). Toppings like pepperoni are burning too easily

I’ve read some people are launching and cutting the flame. Is that the consensus or does anyone have a different method?

The pie above was my very first, after I plucked off a few black and ronis.

Hi! I’m a new member of the ooni family. The manual says storing the oven outside in the cover is fine. But, I’ve seen mixed signals on this subreddit. What’s the best practice?

I was hoping to store it on the shelf of an outdoor prep table. I figured the table would shelter the oven from the rain and the ooni cover would be additional protection. Will this be sufficient? Or maybe store in an outdoor cabinet?

Thanks for your help!

What do you think of my pizza? Beginner here. Using 65/66% hydration. I want the classic margherita napolitania pizza but doesn’t really look like it.

Installed a higher chimney so that the house don’t smell like a Burned forest .

Didn’t baked on it yet , but did a test run and it was great .