How To
5 guides tagged How To
Explainer
How to Manage a Wood Fire in a Pizza Oven (2026): Fuel, Airflow, and the Live Flame
A wood fire is not a setting, it is a heat source you have to keep feeding, and the single biggest determinant of whether it works is the moisture in the wood. The US EPA's Burn Wise programme states it directly: "Wood burns best at a moisture content of less than 20 percent," and it tells you to "season wood for at least six months." Everything else, building the fire, pushing it to the side, feeding small and often, managing the ash bed, is downstream of starting with dry fuel. Here is the whole skill, plus an honest comparison with a gas burner.
Read the guide →~12 min read
Explainer
Cooking Multiple Pizzas Back to Back (2026): Why Pizza Four Is Always the Worst
Every pizza you launch strips heat out of the stone, and the fix is to wait for the deck to come back rather than to launch on schedule. Ooni publishes the rule in its own Koda 16 guide: preheat the stone to 715 to 850°F (380 to 450°C), and between pizzas "make sure the stone gets back up to 715°F-850°F (380°C-450°C) before launching". That one instruction is the entire skill of cooking for a group, and almost nobody follows it. Here is the mechanism, the fuel by fuel differences, and a service rhythm that keeps pizza six as good as pizza one.
Read the guide →~11 min read
Explainer
How to Turn a Pizza (2026): How Often, With What, and Why
Ooni's own Koda 16 guide gives you the number: "use your peel to take the pizza out and turn it every 20-30 seconds." The reason is that a high heat pizza oven is deliberately asymmetric, with one burner or one fire on one side, so the edge nearest the flame chars while the edge nearest the mouth stays pale. Turning is not a flourish, it is how you make an uneven oven cook evenly. Here is how often to turn, which tool to use, and the two motions that do it without dragging the toppings off.
Read the guide →~10 min read
Explainer
How Long Does a Pizza Oven Take to Heat Up? (2026)
Short answer: most portable gas ovens reach a pizza-ready ~900°F floor in roughly 15 to 25 minutes; wood and multi-fuel ovens usually want a bit longer because you have to build and establish the fire (often 20 to 30+ minutes); and indoor electric ovens like the Ooni Volt 2, Breville Pizzaiolo, and Ninja Artisan typically preheat in around 20 minutes on a preset. But the number that actually matters isn't the air, it's the floor. The burner heats the air fast, and the cooking stone lags well behind it. Launch before the stone is soaked and you get a pale, soggy bottom. Here's how long it really takes, why the floor is the wait, and exactly how to know it's ready.
Read the guide →~11 min read
Explainer
How to Use a Pizza Oven (2026): First Fire to First Pizza
Your oven just arrived. Here's exactly what to do, from the curing burn nobody warns you about, through the long preheat that actually matters, to launching, turning, and pulling your first leopard-spotted pie. The whole process is simpler than the internet makes it look; the two things that separate a great first night from a stressful one are a fully-charged floor and a calm launch. We'll get you both.
Read the guide →~10 min read