"My husband and I just moved to a house in the 'burbs with our 3- and 6-year-old sons, and I'm in the giddy, anything-is-possible stage of suddenly gaining access to a decent-size backyard. Procuring an outdoor pizza oven topped my wish list of backyard items I was pining for. I could already imagine hosting backyard dinners and ditching pizza deliveries to feed my kids during the work week.
As eager as my husband and I were to fire up our first pizza as soon as our Ooni Karu 16 Multi-Fuel Pizza Oven arrived, our kids honestly couldn't wait. After jumping in headfirst, we learned through a few torched pizzas that there was a significant learning curve we'd have to contend with. After some trial and error, these tips helped us cross the threshold from pizza novices to pros:
- Buy a couple of pizza peels (we have both metal and wooden options) to prep multiple pizzas on. This way, you can have pizzas ready to slide in, one right after the other, as soon as the oven is ready.
- Wait for the pizza stone to fully heat (about 15 minutes). Otherwise, your stone won't be hot enough, and you'll get undercooked dough and burnt toppings.
- Sprinkle some cornmeal in addition to lightly flouring the pizza peels. The cornmeal really helps the pizzas easily slide off of the peel into the oven."
— Angela Elias, senior content director, Commerce
