Exhaustive (nearly) Pizza Oven Study and 1st Use

OK, it’s time to write something again. I’ve been really dialing in oven baked pizza (I will provide an article with pics of my progress soon).

In the back of my mind, I’ve wanted to get an outdoor pizza oven like from Ooni or a Gozney Roccbox (gotta’ love the name Rocc since it’s a family name!).

After an obsessive compulsive search in only my manner, I decided to create a spreadsheet (go figure!). Its way below.

I’ve purchased two units. One is from an off brand, GRILIFE, but it fits my existing southern 3 burner grill. Given that 3 burner grills are small, I had very few options. I was unsure if I wanted a stand alone pizza oven (it turns out I do!) and wanted to use my existing infrastructure (grill) because I figured it would be cheaper than a fully separate oven (it is).

Upon receipt of the unit, I was surprised by the build quality. It had a pounded metal top, likely black aluminum. It has a perforated bottom to better conduct burner heat to the baking stone, and very importantly, a double walled in the interior to maintain baking temp in the chamber. I didn’t know about these features until I purchased. As an engineer and design enthusiast, I am impressed by it’s well thought out baking engineering and design simplicity.

---

I just ordered the Ooni Koda 12. I’ll follow up with that one later.

---

We used the GRILIFE for the first time on Pizza Friday, April 8, 2022 to make four 10″ vitamin P’s. 10″ is a little smaller than what I make in the oven, but acceptable. Here’s a few pictures:

---

All in all, I give this GRILIFE a solid B. The experience is similar to cooking in my oven at full temp of 550F. Cook times are about 5 – 6 minutes and get shorter as I cook consecutive pizzas. Although, the crumb seemed more open, softer, and had more leopard spotting than in the oven.

---

Exhaustive pizza oven comparison table