Solo Stove Pi Review: Cooking Pizza and Cast Iron With Ease

There is only one or two pieces of wood at a time. You'll be opening the back door several times during a cooking session if you misplace the handle. The smoke from the oven's mouth blackened the top of the oven after one use. It wipes off, but not before a warning.

Too hot to handle.

When placed next to an oven like the Gozney Roccbox, the Pi is remarkably small. Other advantages quickly showed themselves as I cooked with it over the course of two weeks.

The cooking space is 15 inches in diameter. It is big enough to fit our Lodge cast-iron pan, but it has a weird handle. The pan is hot enough to roast asparagus in a couple of minutes, but the handle is relatively cool. This is a revelation for someone who has burned themselves through gloves.

The top is not straight. It's not a feature that I would have asked for in a pizza oven, but it's a great place to quickly put a burning hot pan while you quickly tong out the asparagus, put them in a serving bowl, and replace them with potatoes. Since it came out with a lid for its firepits, this is something that has occurred to Solo Stove as well.

I was worried that the dough would burn in the middle, or that it would be hard to clean, because there was a noticeable split in the middle of the pizza stone. When the oven is 700 degrees, pizza cooks quickly enough that it is not a cause for concern.

The price and personal preferences of your backyard cooking implement are what determines it. The option I tried is the one with swappable wood and gas attachments, which costs a cool $645 at its current presale price. The Ooni Karu 12 is a pretty great, attractive, and easy-to-use oven, so it makes it hard to sell it.

If you enjoy cooking with wood and like your dinner to be fast, hot, and on the table in half an hour, it's hard to imagine a better summer buy than the wood-fired version. I work full-time and have two school-aged kids, and with a small, high-heat pizza oven, I can still have dinner on the table in a matter of minutes. I might even sip a chilled beverage.