Now we're cooking with wood.

Tonight was a big night: we got to fire up our new Ooni Karu pizza oven.

The verdict on the Ooni: freakin' awesome. On the pizza: pretty good. More importantly, we can tell it has a ton of potential. We just have to get better at cooking with fire. For sure K and I are up to the challenge.

Backing up a bit, last year at the beginning of lockdowns we decided to dig out an area for a pizza oven. We like making pizza after all. Our grand plan was to build an oven out of a mixture of vermiculite and portland cement formed over a giant yoga ball. It's a thing. I think my not being confident it wouldn't turn out looking like a giant half-round wad of crumbling concrete affected my motivation to build it. So we never did.

Instead, we bought an Ooni.

There are a couple of legit pros to this little oven over a larger one:

• Since it's so small, it doesn't take very much fuel
• Also, it heats up to 700-900º in about fifteen minutes vs. an hour or so for a larger oven
• It's portable so we can take it along with us in our van

For our first test, we used Roberta's half '00' flour half all-purpose flour dough recipe we found in the New York Times. Thankfully, the URM Cash and Carry store in Wenatchee carries '00' flour so we've already stocked up. While that was rising, I took our chainsaw and ax to some logs in order get them down to a size that fits in the Ooni (about 6" long).

We decided to play it a little safe given how dry it is and used lump charcoal for the base fuel. Right before putting our pizzas in the oven we tossed in a couple pieces of wood in order to get some real flames.

True to its word, the Ooni didn't take long to crank up to temp, even with mostly lump charcoal which doesn't burn as hot as wood. Time to put a simple pizza together on our peel.

Then, check the temp of the stone inside the oven with our trusty Harbor Freight laser thermometer.

729º would work for our first test. Hot enough. When we use all wood we'll look for a true Neopolitan pizza temp of 900º-plus. 

K had strategically planted oregano, basil, and rosemary next to our outdoor countertop.

Perfection.

Time to slide it in the oven. I had prepped the dough on the peel too soon and it was starting to stick. Time is of the essence.

In addition to flame management, there's some skill involved in rotating and moving the pizza around as it cooks. To get good at that, we'll need a turning peel. Neither the US Chef's Store nor the URM carries one, so for tonight's test I had to use the Ooni stainless peel we ordered with the oven.

Also true to its word, the pizza cooked in under two minutes. Legit. I had thinned out the dough too much so it tore when I went to pull it out of the oven. Otherwise, it cooked throughout, was crispy and of course had that fire-baked taste and texture. Far short of perfect, but like I said, lots of potential.

Next up, K made a margarita and slid it in the oven.

The side closest to the flames also burnt. We'll need to practice and hone our timing and technique. Like the first pizza, it still tasted amazing. She topped it with fresh basil to boot.

Despite some issues, we'd easily call our first stab at cooking pizza by fire a success and we're stoked (get it?) to keep practicing. This little oven is going to be a game changer. Oh, we also have to finish building the gabion walls.