The physique has Ooni’s distinctive dark-grey turtle-like form, constituted of chrome steel in a shell of powder-coated carbon metal that, once more, insulates it remarkably. I can relaxation my hand on the highest of the oven whereas it’s going full blast and it simply barely feels heat. The door is constituted of triple-paned, insulated borosilicate glass that appears designed to invoke deliberate comparisons to the Pizzaiolo, whose door is merely double-paned. It may also warmth as much as 850 levels Fahrenheit (Pizzaiolo can solely go as much as 750 levels, the losers!).

The door has three knobs on it. These knobs, sadly, did take me a bit of longer to determine than the Pizzaiolo’s, which include handy presets for various sorts of pizza. The one on the far left is a timer, the one within the center is the temperature, and the one on the far proper is what Ooni calls a Boost mode, which lets you switch warmth backwards and forwards between the highest and backside heating parts for various functions.

If you want your cheese barely browned, you possibly can flip the warmth up; if you happen to’ve been baking plenty of pizzas, opening the door quite a bit, and transferring dough out and in rapidly, you possibly can hold turning the dial to switch warmth again to the underside. It’s a easy operate, however the symbols on the dial are weirdly obscure.

Hot Hot Heat

It is insane how rapidly the oven preheats. I’ll warning right here that I do suggest ready a full hour for the stone to warmth all over, which is able to cut back the chance that your pizza dough will cool the cooking floor immediately and get caught. But the primary time I used the oven, I turned it on to 650 levels (what Ooni recommends for a “New York–style” pizza) and walked inside to tug elements out of the fridge. By the time I walked again out 13 minutes later, it was prepared. This is much less time than it takes my standard indoor oven to achieve 400 levels.

The principal distinction between the Pizzaiolo and the Volt 12 is philosophical. The specs on the Volt are simply objectively higher than these of the Pizzaiolo, however greater than that, the Pizzaiolo lives completely indoors and has presets. While it does have a handbook mode that permits you to play pizza baker and hover across the oven, anxiously rotating the pie your self in order that it browns crusts completely throughout, you don’t really want to. It does really feel like playacting. By the time I completed my testing interval with the Pizzaiolo, I simply made dough, punched a preset, and walked away. It’s the best oven if you happen to’re a busy working mother or father with babies.

The Volt 12 does have an necessities booklet that permits you to decide which model of pizza you need and plug within the timer and the temperature setting. It’s not that laborious, and it does give the oven a bit of extra versatility. For instance, I simply realized what grandma-style pizza is, versus Detroit-style (somebody will undoubtedly right me, however so far as I perceive it, grandma-style is thinner).