Best Outdoor Pizza Ovens for Homemade Pizza

I tried four portable pizza ovens from BakerStone, Gyber, Le Peppe, and Ooni. Here's what turned out the best pies.

The only thing better than pizza delivered to your door is wood-fired pizza, available on demand, and cooked in your own backyard. Enter the tabletop outdoor pizza oven. These appliances, most of which run on some combination of wood, charcoal, or propane, offer the promise of endless, restaurant-quality pizza, prepared with any assortment of toppings your heart desires.

We first assessed outdoor pizza ovens in 2021, and the models and findings below reflect that initial evaluation. Prices for the models have been updated.

(In the coming months, we’ll also be looking at new models, including a gas-powered option from Ooni, an inexpensive wood-burning oven from Bertello, and the much-anticipated Pi Pizza Oven from Solo Stove, a company best known for its wildly popular smokeless firepits.)

Outdoor pizza ovens are nothing new—large pizza ovens have been built into upscale outdoor kitchens for years. What is new is the recent proliferation of much less expensive small metal ovens that are designed to be used on tabletops. But the appeal remains the same: You can build a roaring fire and cook a pizza at temperatures north of 700° F, which is on a par with the cooking temperatures you’d register in those big ovens used in pizzerias. You’d never reach temperatures that high in your oven, or even on many grills. And with the wood and charcoal-burning pizza ovens, you get the distinct taste of smoke, which you can’t safely replicate indoors, since it’s seriously dangerous to burn charcoal indoors, or wood anywhere outside a wood stove or fireplace.

Photo: Paul Hope/Consumer Reports Photo: Paul Hope/Consumer Reports

As a culinary school grad and former chef, I’ll admit that for years, perfect pizza was my white whale. I’ve nailed it a few times in a kamado grill, but I’ve been intrigued by these outdoor pizza ovens since they began creeping into my social media feeds in the past couple of years. To see whether these ovens could really deliver pizza on a par with what you’d get from your favorite pizzeria, I purchased four widely available models to try in my yard.

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