A Fun Cooking Activity - Take this Pizza Oven Anywhere!

This summer we’ve been having a lot of fun with the Uuni wood-fire portable pizza maker so we thought we’d share it here! Who doesn’t love a good wood-fired pizza? The oak flavor, perfect crispy edges… yum, it’s all just too good! We researched several different portable pizza ovens and chose the Uuni because it’s small and uses real oak pellets. It also gets up to 932 degrees and cooks the pizza so quickly, like 2.5 minutes fast, which is the way wood-fired pizza should be. We were torn between the easier gas pizza oven and oak pellets style, but ultimately we wanted the wood fired taste. There’s also something about slowing things down when prepping sometimes. As a culture, we’ve become so accustomed to instant everything, it’s also nice to take your time while getting the oven heated up, drink a glass of wine, enjoy some conversation. It only takes about 10-15 minutes or so to get the oven over 800 degrees.

Although this pizza maker has been a lot of fun, it’s not an easy entertaining item. It’s the process of making pizzas as you go, learning how to turn the pizza and properly cook it and work the Uuni that’s fun and challenging. It’s been hours of enjoyment for us though and feels like we’re bringing camping into our own backyard! Once you mess up a pizza or 2 (haha!), it’s super easy and will be the best homemade pizza you’ll ever make.

One tip, use a lot of corn meal under the pizza dough so it will slide off the pizza peel easily into the oven. This was the trickiest part for us, but we figured out that it just needed a lot of flour and corn meal under the pizza dough! Basically you want to use a shaking action when you slide the pizza off the peel. Like a 1-2-3 shake and then one final shake to get it off. You should feel the whole pizza slide before you even put it in the oven, like shake the peel some and make sure your pizza is sliding. They also recommend lifting the edge of the dough blowing under the dough to help it slide more, but that’s up to you. Your guests may think that’s funky!

After the first pizza is cooked, you’ll need to maintain the oven to make sure it stays at the temperature you want by add SMALL amounts of pellets and then torching the pellets to speed up the process. My advice is to get all the pizzas ready first, line them up and cook them one after the other. The pizzas cook in under a few minutes when the oven is at 800 degrees. You’ll need a good torch and wood pellets for this to work as well. Use the torch to make the process go faster. Just a little warning, the fire will come out the back so make sure no one is sitting behind or around the Uuni while you’re cooking!

Look at that crispy, wood-fired crust! It’s SO yummy and authentic! If you’re up for the challenge you can make a homemade dough or you can buy it! Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods both sell dough. Sometimes your local pizza shop will sell you dough too. Same with the sauce! Make your own or try a good jarred sauce like Rao’s Homemade.