16 best pizza ovens for cooking outdoors, from wood-fired to gas models

We were immediately impressed by the look of the rotante, with its wide-opening encased in a matte finish of either white, black, stone or orange.

It’s a beast of an oven; the cordierite stone is big enough to cook 16in pizzas, opening up a whole host of opportunities when it comes to what you serve up.

The rotante has a visible U-shaped burner that ignites easily and creates a consistent flame that surrounds your culinary creation, but underneath the stone is a second burner (that you can’t see) that ensures the base crisps up nicely.

So far, so very good, and we haven’t even got to the best part yet. We’ve been cooking pizzas in outdoor ovens for IndyBest for some time now and we’re still trying to perfect our turning technique, so the dough is cooked evenly by the flame. The rotante will save you the hassle, because, with the flick of a switch, the pizza stone will start revolving to ensure even cooking every time. It’s a game-changing idea, brilliantly executed, and consistently produced the best fresh pizza we’ve eaten at home.

If you like spending a lot of time looking at an in-built thermometer, this wood-pellet fuelled, hopper-fed oven is for you, because it takes an awfully long time to heat up and wasn’t the most efficient pellet oven on test – we had to burn through three loads before we had enough heat load in the oven chamber to cook our pizza.

When we were up to temperature, the 14in pizza itself took over five minutes to cook, so you might be wondering why this oven has made our list.

Well, it’s because when the pizza finally emerged (using the included pizza peel) it was cooked to perfection with just the right amount of charring and, possibly because of the amount of time it spent in the oven, it was infused with a wonderful wood-fire flavour.

The other reason is the somewhat slow operation of the oven might work in its favour for some rookie pizza slingers, as cooking with wood can be quite a labour-intensive, finessed process and cooking the pizza itself can be quite frenetic to get it all evenly cooked without burning. This oven slows down that process, for less stress but very good results.

The hinged legs, removable chimney and lightweight design mean there is plenty of potential for portability, too.

As the volt 12 is an indoor/outdoor oven, it means when BST isn’t playing ball the kitchen becomes the oven’s natural home.

Quite simply, it has an on/off switch, which means no more faffing around with kindling or gas valves, it just needs the power socket in your kitchen, hence the name. Obviously, it will take up a fair chunk of your countertop, so unless you have a space on par with Nigella’s, you’ll probably just be bringing it out when pizza is on the menu, and that also means finding somewhere to store it when it’s not in use.

Not that it’s an eyesore – Ooni has done its best to retain the sleek stylings of its purely outdoor ovens, with its steel and powder-coated shell housing a top and bottom heating element, so you have instant control over where the heat is coming from, which is handy if you’re keen on producing a variety of pizza styles, not just Neapolitan.

Three front-mounted dials control the timing, temperature and the direction of the heat. In the absence of a flame, Ooni has inset a light into the ceiling of the oven, so you can see the pizza cooking. A chime lets you know when you’re up to temperature and the numbers on the dial flash as the oven reaches each temperature level on the way up.

It also has a boost setting, which comes in handy to maintain the temperature when the door is opened to turn your pizza, which you will still need to do.

Finally, the pizza. Our Neapolitan was ready to go in 90 seconds, with the oven producing a base and crust with a lovely bite and aromatic, evenly melted mozzarella, time and time again.

The roccbox has been a regular in our round-ups for years, as it consistently produces beautifully succulent Neapolitans.

Available in a range of colourways, its unique shape has the effect of elongating the flame and giving it a satisfying roll over the firebox roof.

This flame is close enough to cook your pizza in no time at all, without burning, cooking 11in pizzas with no need for turning, because the heat from the overhead flame spreads evenly in the chamber, so you can have a crispy base in around two minutes and a slightly doughier one in 90 seconds.

It still gets our vote as one of the best portable ovens out there, with easily retractable legs and a detachable external gas or wood burner, and the silicone outer layer stays cool to the touch. At 20kg, it’s one for the car rather than carrying, but it will guarantee that wherever you pitch up, pizza perfection isn’t too far away

This hand-crafted oven from the Netherlands is shipped flat-packed, so you need a little investment in time and effort putting the corten steel parts together, but you don’t need to be super practical to get it up and running, thanks to the well-thought-out design.

Once you’ve put it together, you can guarantee even heat across the cordierite baking stones, ensuring the oven delivers a crispy 11in base in around four to five minutes, without you having to constantly fiddle with the dough, which can lead to sticking and tearing.

Once the fire is going, you’ll need to wait just over half an hour before you can start cooking, but the pizza quality is consistently delicious, with beautifully smoky, flavourful dough, bubbles of cheese and well-cooked toppings.

Designed to be used with the manufacturer’s camp chef cooking system, this is a great way of repurposing a traditional camping cooker to produce something a little more exciting.

The oven sits on top of the gas burners and uses them as the heat source to get the ceramic pizza stone up to temperature, which it did, very quickly, in around 15 minutes.

There’s plenty of room to manoeuvre in terms of getting the pizza in and out, as well as turning it halfway through, and the oven does a very respectable job of cooking any toppings evenly, as well as puffing up that Neapolitan crust. The oven consistently made moreish 10in pizzas with the stone drawing out enough moisture from the dough to give a nice crisp base and chewy crust.

Handmade in Yorkshire, the DeliVita is a Roman-style oven with a polished fibreglass shell, which comes in a range of colours to suit any al fresco eating area. If you can’t find a suitable match, you can also have your oven in a bespoke colour for an extra £200. Thanks to the fibreglass shell, it’s surprisingly lightweight (just under 30kg), so can easily be moved around a garden.

The wood-fired DeliVita cooks as good as it looks and is roomy enough to rustle up 12in pizzas, with the traditional clay base ensuring it reaches the ideal cooking temperature in just under 30 minutes, while staying safe to touch on the outside.

Sixty seconds is all you’ll need before the pizza’s done and the cooking area makes the base so much easier to turn, helping to avoid burning. Our Neapolitan base was delightfully light and crispy every time, with puffed cheese and well-cooked toppings.

Launched in April 2021, the dome is essentially a scaled-down version of the ovens that grace professional kitchens and are installed by Gozney. Although, it’s actually still a sizeable piece of kit, with the dimensions of a traditional Neapolitan oven.

This is the dual fuel version, which reached cooking temperature (500C) in around 50 minutes, tracking the heat build-up with the mounted digital thermometer, which was very accurate. The sizeable opening means it easily swallows a 15-16in pizza, cooking it in two minutes under a lovely, rolling, golden flame. Alternatively, there’s room for a couple of smaller pizzas and plenty more space for turning the pizza while it cooks, for optimum results.

Whatever the size, the dome produced wonderful Neapolitan pizza, with a perfect crust – puffy, airy and delicious to the bite, while the rest of the pizza was classically thin but equally tasty.

The insulation was fabulous and added to the stress-free experience, as we didn’t have to keep worrying about temperature control. This is a fantastic oven for anyone who wants to take their outdoor cookery up a notch or three.

The company that made its name producing very nice-looking fire pits has since produced a very nice-looking stainless-steel pizza oven powered by a wood hopper or gas attachment, both of which are remarkably efficient at heating up the cooking stone to the required 450C within 15 minutes.

The cylindrical shape of the oven is unusual, however, it means it is a very compact oven that is also fuel efficient and makes the most of the wood it’s fed.

The wide mouth makes it easy to throw the pizza from the peel and there is a guard towards the back of the oven that ensures perfect placement every time, so you can avoid getting the pizza too close to the heat source when it first goes in.

The heat regulation and retention was fantastic and the resulting pizzas had a wonderfully smoky taste to the dough – it took minimal management to lightly char the crust and crisp up the toppings.

Producing a pizza oven was obviously a natural progression for this Danish manufacturer, which established its reputation making high-end bio fireplaces and has drawn on this expertise to come up with the gas-powered turtle.

Everything about this oven is easy on the eye, from the sturdy wooden legs to the black powder-coated steel, shell-like dome, which gives the oven its name and houses a split cordierite stone that can take a 13in disc of dough and turn it into a very appetising pizza.

A single dial at the front of the oven controls a linear burner at the back, which got the oven up to cooking temperature within 10 minutes and created a very even heat throughout the chamber.

Throwing and turning the pizza was very simple, thanks to the turtle’s large front aperture and what came out on the peel would have put a smile on the face of a seasoned pizzaiolo, with a pizza that was crispy on the bottom, suitably singed on the crust and mouth-wateringly smoky.

We’ve loved this oven ever since it was released in 2019, mainly because it makes everything about outdoor cookery so incredibly simple. In less than five minutes from unboxing, we were all set up, with the oven on its way to perfect pizza-making temperature which, because of its internal dimensions took only 20 minutes.

No more than 90 seconds of cooking gave us a 12in pizza with the perfect blend of oozing cheese and crispy toppings, as well as lovely charring around the well-puffed crust. Turning and accessing pizzas also isn’t a problem with the wide-mouthed design meaning that, with the aid of a turning peel, you can move the base around without having to take it out of the oven.

We always seem to get the best results from Ooni’s range on the koda 12, but maybe that’s because we’re just so used to cooking with it by now. In fact, we’ve become so confident, we’ve been expanding our dishes beyond pizza, to trays full of fajita mix – which come out of the oven wonderfully smoky – and even moist and juicy steaks.

As well as being compatible with traditional large propane tanks, for when you’re using the oven at home, the very lightweight (9.5kg) koda 12 will also run on 1lb tanks, making it one of the most portable pizza ovens on the market when you combine it with the £39.99 Ooni carry-case (£35, Ooni.com).

We’ve all heard of kamado barbecues, but now kamado pizza ovens are having their moment. It seems only natural, as the big bonus of kamado cookery has always been that the ceramic, which is what it’s traditionally made from, ensures the wood fire gets the oven up to temperature quickly, insulates and maintains the heat. This is perfect for cooking pizza, and, after setting the fire and getting the Auplex up to temperature in 40 minutes, using the accurate thermometer, we pushed the wood back to reveal a large cooking stone that was able to take a 10in disc of dough.

The stone crisped up our dough and puffed up our crust from beneath, while the ambient heat created by the fire in the ceramic shell was enough to evenly cook the mozzarella to a sufficiently gooey level. The opening was wide enough for us to turn our pizza in the oven, but not so wide that we lost lots of the precious heat through it.

The fact the oven sits on two metal legs with heat-resistant bamboo handles on either side made it perfect for balcony or tabletop cooking, too.

This is a gas oven with a 13in cordierite revolving stone that was ready to receive the dough within 25 minutes. It even comes with a carry bag/rain cover and pizza peel.

The stone is turned at two revolutions per minute (so you don’t have to worry about burning) by a battery-operated detachable motor that snaps onto the base of the oven with magnets, adding to the overall portability.

We weren’t absolutely convinced at first but, in practice, it worked brilliantly. The heat balance was easy to control, so we could turn down the flame when the pizza was in, so the crust and cheese bubbled nicely, the base was crisp and the toppings evenly cooked.

A combination of the revolving stone, which really takes a lot of the stress out of cooking your pizza, and all the accessories included in the price mean this really is a great oven if you’re taking your first steps as a pizzaiolo.

This is DeliVita’s first foray into the portable gas pizza oven market and the Diavolo makes a good first impression, with its stylish curves and matte finish, which comes in two colour options (blue and green).

There’s also plenty to like about the way it cooks pizzas, and we only had to wait 18 minutes to get from gas on to pizza in, measuring the temperature of the stone with the included temperature gun.

The diavolo cooks 12in pizzas in around 90 seconds and there’s plenty of space with which to work your magic with the folding pizza peel (which adds to the oven’s portability) to ensure everything is cooked evenly.

Crusts were puffed, cheese was bubbling, toppings were nicely cooked and bases were crisp for every pizza that we pulled. The fact the oven is designed to be portable (it comes with a carry case) means this is a great oven for any garden/beach/camp site pizza party.

The woody might look a bit industrial compared with some of the other ovens on display but it does produce some fabulous results when it comes to wood-fired pizza. There is a bit more effort and trial and error required in making sure the hopper is topped up and the chimney vented optimally, but our advice would be to persevere, because, when you get the hang of it, you’ll be rewarded with 12in discs of gourmet pizza.

The thermometer built in to the door will tell you when the oven is hot enough to cook (it took around 25 minutes during testing), then all you have to do is open the door and slide in your dough. The door is fitted with a little peep hole, so you can check up on your creation without having to open up the door unnecessarily and lose heat. Instead, you can see when the pizza needs turning, detach the door (which can be a little fiddly), turn the pizza and replace the door again. It took around 90 seconds to cook the pizza and we didn’t have any trouble turning the pizza on the stone half way through cooking.

The S1 is Gozney’s gas-only version of the original dome, and it’s an absolute beast, weighing almost 50kg. It’s also a serious investment, but this is a statement oven for anyone who is intent on maximising their time in the garden this spring and summer.

You will get a very tasty return on your investment, too, as the pizzas the S1 turned out (in 50-60 seconds) were among the best we ate and wouldn’t have looked out of place if they’d come straight out of a cardboard box with a caricature of an Italian chef on the front.

The quick start gas controls were a doddle to use and we were up to temperature in a matter of minutes and ready to cook our 16in bases. If you’re a little intimidated at the thought of turning a 16in pizza, the S1 provides a large aperture to do it in (the mouth is a whopping 41cm x 120cm), or you can cook multiple smaller pizzas at once, if you’d prefer.

The cream matte dome and black detailing looks clean and stylish but it’s the heat retention capacity that turns this oven into a must-have for anyone who’s really serious about entertaining at home.

Once the built-in digital thermometer hits the magic number of 500C (or higher) the combination of professional-grade insulation and a 30mm double-layer stone floor retains the heat while you cook, so you can literally feed a mass gathering in minutes.