The collection.

Pizza Troubleshooting

One page per failure. Burnt base, soggy centre, cold spots, smoke, and the dough that fights back.
Ooni Koda 16

Our pick.

Ooni Koda 16

Best Overall. From The Best Pizza Ovens (2026).

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Guides.
10
Paid placements.
0
Updated.
Aug 2026

The brief.

Every one of these pages starts with the fix in the first sentence, because if you are reading them you are standing at a hot oven holding a ruined pizza. No preamble, no recipe, just the mechanism and the correction.

The diagnoses are built on the numbers the manufacturers and the governing documents actually publish, Ooni's own stone targets, Gozney's style ranges, the EPA's moisture rule, and the AVPN and EU specifications for Neapolitan, rather than on repeated internet folklore.

01Start here. Explainer

Why Is My Pizza Burnt on the Bottom? (And Why the Reverse Happens Too)

A pizza that comes out black underneath and raw on top is telling you one specific thing: your floor is running hot relative to your dome. Turn the flame down, let the dome catch up, and lift the pizza onto a turning peel for the last few seconds so the top can finish. The mirror image, a charred top over a pale doughy base, is the same imbalance running the other way, and it is fixed by preheating the stone longer rather than by touching the flame at all.

Read the guide~11 min read

The full collection.

  1. Explainer · ~11 min read

    Why Is My Pizza Soggy in the Middle? (And Why the Crust Came Out Pale)

    A soggy centre is one of two things: not enough energy going into the base fast enough, or too much water sitting on top of it. Measure the stone first, because a floor below the range your oven's maker publishes will produce a wet centre no matter how good your dough is. Then cut the sauce, drain the mozzarella, and stop letting a topped pizza sit on the peel. A pale crust is a separate signal, and it points at the dome, not the floor.

  2. Explainer · ~10 min read

    Pizza Oven Hot Spots and Cold Spots: Why Your Oven Cooks Unevenly on Purpose

    Your oven is not faulty. Almost every compact pizza oven has one burner or one fire on one side, which makes the chamber deliberately asymmetric, and the coldest place is the mouth, because the opening radiates heat straight out into the garden. That is why Ooni's own instruction is to turn the pizza every 20 to 30 seconds. Map your own deck once with an infrared thermometer, then turn on a schedule instead of on instinct.

  3. Explainer · ~11 min read

    Why Does My Pizza Taste Smoky? Soot, Acrid Smoke and the Wet Wood Problem

    Acrid smoke and black soot on your pizza are the signature of incomplete combustion, and the number one cause is wet wood. The US EPA is unambiguous: wood burns best at a moisture content of less than 20 percent, and should be seasoned for at least six months. Fix the fuel first, then the airflow, then the cold start. And check whether the bitterness you are tasting is actually burnt semolina on the stone, which is a completely different problem people routinely blame on smoke.

  4. Explainer · ~11 min read

    Why Does My Pizza Dough Tear When I Stretch It? (2026)

    Dough that tears is almost always underdeveloped, underproofed or too cold, and the fix is time rather than force. A gluten net that has not been built, has not been allowed to relax, or is still chilled has nothing to give when you pull on it, so it splits instead of spreading. Commission Regulation (EU) No 97/2010 is a useful anchor for how much time the dough actually wants: 20 minutes of kneading at low speed, a two hour first rise, then four to six hours of second rise at room temperature. This is the diagnostic walkthrough, in the order the causes actually occur.

  5. Explainer · ~11 min read

    Why Does My Pizza Dough Spring Back? (2026)

    Dough that shrinks back is elastic because the gluten is still tight, and the cure is a rest, not more force. Gluten strands held under tension pull themselves back toward their relaxed length the moment you let go, and the only thing that lets them settle at the new length is time. That balance between stretchiness and snap is measurable, which is why Commission Regulation (EU) No 97/2010 specifies a P/L ratio of 0.50 to 0.70 for Pizza Napoletana flour and Mulino Caputo publishes P/L 0.50/0.60 for its Pizzeria flour. Springback is partly a flour property, not only a technique problem.

  6. Explainer · ~11 min read

    Why Is My Pizza Oven Not Getting Hot Enough? A Diagnostic Walkthrough

    Nine times out of ten, an oven that "won't get hot" is getting hot, you're just not preheating the stone long enough or you're reading the wrong number. Most dedicated pizza ovens are built to push a floor near 900°F, but they only do it once the cooking surface has soaked, and only when the fuel and the weather cooperate. This is the checklist we work through, in order, before ever blaming the oven: how to measure heat correctly first, then gas, wood, and electric fuel problems, then the environment, and finally, the rare case where it really is the oven.

  7. Explainer · ~11 min read

    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.

  8. Explainer · ~9 min read

    How to Launch a Pizza (2026): The No-Stick Launch, Step by Step

    The launch is the one skill that intimidates every beginner, sliding a raw, topped pizza off a peel into a 900°F oven without it folding into a calzone. The secret is that the launch is won at the bench, not at the oven mouth: the right peel, semolina under the dough, working fast, light toppings, and one shake test that catches every disaster before it happens. Master those, and the launch itself is a single confident motion.

  9. Explainer · ~10 min read

    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.

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