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Wood-Fired Pizza Ovens
The oven, the fire and the pizza: a history in which nearly every famous date is softer than its story, the rules that define Neapolitan pizza (and contradict each other), how a wood-fired oven actually cooks, choosing between portable and masonry ovens, burning the right wood in Michigan, and the dough, styles and falling-heat dishes that make the oven worth lighting. No oven has been bought yet — the Ooni Karu 2 Pro under consideration is examined, not reviewed.
The History Pompeii bakeries, a pizza first recorded as rent on a mill in 997, Naples before the Margherita (with basil and mozzarella decades earlier), America's coal-oven pizzerias, and the portable-oven boom. Explore →
What Makes It Neapolitan Three rulebooks — EU law, the AVPN trade mark and UNESCO — that disagree on where 485 °C goes, whether wood is required, and even the date of pizza itself. Explore →
How the Oven Cooks Measured, not asserted: most of the heat reaches a pizza as radiation from the dome, the floor drops 100 °F under every pie, and a wood oven is only 13% efficient. Explore →
Choosing an Oven Portable, heavy or masonry; wood, gas or both. A comparison of the current ovens with test-kitchen results, the trade-offs that matter, and three makers' conflicting curing schedules. Explore →
The Ooni Karu 2 Pro The oven under consideration, read closely: its digital thermometer reads air not stone, its manual contradicts itself on fuel, and what testers measured on wood. Explore →
Wood and Fire Oak, ash, beech and maple; under 20% moisture; small splits fed often. The contested question of wood flavour, and Michigan's new firewood rule for 2027. Explore →
Using the Oven Measure the stone, not the flame. Launching, turning, recovering between pizzas, a table of failures and fixes, cleaning, and cooking through a Michigan winter. Explore →
Safety and the Law Carbon monoxide, clearances, hot ash a day later, and whether a pizza oven is legal in Michigan (yes, as a cooking fire — unless the township says no). Explore →
The Dough The hotter the oven, the plainer the dough: why sugar and oil burn at Neapolitan heat, the long cold ferment, sourdough, flour and shaping. Explore →
Pizza Styles Neapolitan, New York, New Haven's white clam pie, Roman bianca, and Detroit's pan pizza from Michigan — and the heat each one wants. Explore →
Beyond Pizza Flatbreads, cast iron, roasts and a skillet cookie on a dying fire — and the order of an evening as a wood oven cools. Explore →
Corrections The claims the research overturned, the ones true only in a narrower form, and the ones that could not be confirmed. Explore →
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