Lighting Ooni Fyra Pizza Oven

The ease of cleanup is something I love about outdoor cooking. Fyra 12's soot buildup is not a common problem (even when the flame is well-oxygenated). You can't clean everything at once. Fyra 12 has two chimneys. One for smoke and the other for pellet loading. They have many removable parts and can all get filthy after being used. The pizza stone can be cleaned easily and needs little else.

It is important to wait for the oven's temperature to completely cool before you can store the item or place the cover.

A tip is to be careful when removing the oven's door to turn or remove the pizza. A slight wind gust can cause a backdraft and the oven will flash. While it is not a concern for anyone cooking pizzas in the oven, you should make sure that the oven's rear is away from children.

I made a batch and brought it to my house. Once the oven arrived, I got baking. The rest--trial, error, many pizzas. Numerous rooftop parties. Lots of compliments. And the declaration that summer 2022 will be the year of pizza.

These attributes make the Fyra 12 attractive for a variety of cooks.

You do need to wait for the oven to cool down completely before storing it or placing the cover on it.

My favorite thing about the oven is how easy it is to use. The wood pellets and fire starter combo could not be simpler, and so long as you keep the hopper filled to the top (and don’t, as I did on one occasion, forget about it while eating pizza for 45 minutes), you’ll be rewarded with consistent, very high temperatures. The first time I used the Fyra, I was scared about getting the pizza off the peel and into the oven, not maneuvering the pie around the oven correctly, or otherwise ruining dinner by having no experience working with a pizza oven before, but the entire process was intuitive. Without ever interacting with live fire, you reap all of the flavorful benefits in your cooking.

The Ooni Fyra 12 makes great pizza. Regardless of the dough you use (I’ve tried a few homemade recipes as well as store bought), the results are puffed, spotted, and cooked in record time. It’s a delight to use for a fun dinner for two and amazing as a centerpiece of a party, once you get a handle on your personal system and best practices. The compact nature of the oven also means that whenever it’s not getting the party started, it can easily be stowed away in its box, which is relatively narrow and stackable. As a hater of one-trick kitchen gadgets and large appliances generally, I was surprised how much I loved the Ooni, and how readily I made space for it in my home—the payoff is just that fun.

Ooni Fyra also has the iconic foldable legs you'll find in every Ooni oven. The compact, portable nature of the Ooni Fyra model is one our favorites. It measures 27.17 x 18 x 10.24 inches. It is compact and can be installed almost anywhere.

Ooni suggests running the Fyra on full heat for at least 30 minutes to eliminate any excess food.

Lightweight and compact, the Ooni Fyra 12 portable pizza oven can be toted up and down from the roof when needed. It’s the least expensive model the company currently sells. And best of all, it is fueled by wood pellets taht you feed into a hopper at the back of the oven. No stoking flames, rearranging charcoal or logs, or (god forbid) touching a propane tank in any way.

You can also cook other things using the Ooni Fyra 12, provided you have cookware that fits inside the oven slot. Ooni provides recipes on its website for things like duck breasts and banana bread, which you cook the same way you would in any wood-fired oven—rotating to give every angle equal time facing the heat source. A tiny cast-iron skillet will work here, but you’ll need to pull the skillet out and rotate the food inside the pan rather than turning the pan itself, since the handle of the skillet will stick out of the oven; Ooni sidesteps this problem by selling its own cast iron skillet that features a removable handle. I think this is fussy (the pan is also a little flimsy and small, IMO), so I will stick to pizza.