Gozney Roccbox Portable Outdoor Pizza Oven – Includes Professional Grade Pizza Peel, Built-In Thermometer and Safe Touch Silicone Jacket – Propane Gas Fired, With Rolling Wood Flame – New Olive Gree

I don’t recall what ‘convinced’ me that I needed to get a pizza oven. Perhaps I’m a victim of subliminal advertising?!

Anyway, after doing some research, reading various reviews, I settled on this one; the idea that I could start using ‘predictable’ gas and then ‘upgrade’ to wood – albeit with a separate wood-burner for around 100 swayed it – though I’ve not made the leap yet.

I know I was onto a winner, because when I first talked about it, and then ordered it, my wife rolled her eyes (literally!), but now she’s a convert.

Nonetheless, there are a few – mostly good – caveats:

– It does take some practice! Our first few pizzas were edible(ish), but looked like alien road-kill. I now use Jamie Oliver’s wood-fired oven dough recipe. The big pluses are that it works for us, and it can be ready within a couple of hours (though I usually use around a half of it, freezing the rest – which is good for a few weeks). Many recipes seem to have a 24 hour/next-day lead-time. I will probably ‘be brave’ and try some other recipes, including sourdough at some point. The recipe provided with the oven may well work well – though it didn’t for us. But that may be down to lack of experience on our part.
– We ended up getting wooden peels to ‘launch’ the pizzas. Sprinkling fine semolina is almost certainly a mandatory ‘lubricant’.
– We also got a 7″ ‘turning’ peel (I could find no size guidance for this, but 7″ works well! ;o). Takes a little practice (there are many Youtube videos on this), but means that the pizza cooks even quicker – no cool-down whilst turning.
– I make my own pizza sauce (see BBC Good Food recipe). Make it as thick as you reasonably can. This reduces soak-in – that may compromise the pizza’s ‘structural integrity’, and you can always water it down, it you over-do it. Leftover can be frozen, or used as a rich pasta sauce. We have an ’emergency’ tin of Mutti pizza sauce, in case we ever run out (not used since).
– Don’t overdo it with the toppings; less is more (mostly).
– The supplied peel can be used for everything, but getting ‘specialised’ peels – see above – has made life easier. Again, this may be down to lack of experience on our part in the early days?
– The Biggest Problem(sm), is that we can’t now be in a supermarket and fancy a quick & easy pizza-meal! :o)

But apart from that, it’s been great!