[bsder]

> You won't achieve wok hei on your stove

Not true. Pull out that blowtorch.

> your oven will not be ablr to achieve the high temperatures required for the best versions of certain foods

Get a steel or aluminum plate for your oven. The conductivity can make up for a lot of the heat differential. Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach, but almost everything else is just fine.

> restaurants in your area will get priority from suppliers over what you find in the grocery store

This might be true, but from what I have seen most of the restaurants are barely even reaching SysCo/USFoods level of quality ingredients. Your local grocery store is probably just fine until you are a very good cook. At that point, you might have to start looking at more niche grocery stores.

And, if you get better than that, well, you're likely sufficiently obsessive that you will find a way.

> You start getting into fine dining or a Michelin experience with teams of people preparing the food and it's an entirely different level of impossibility to make at home.

It's more sheer technique and attention to fussy detail than teams of people. A patissier is simply WAY better than you are at making desserts, for example. They know all the tricks; they will also have all the necessary equipment.

However, yeah, Michelin restaurants are definitely next level.

[ghaff]

For most people, it's also not just the technique (and, to a lesser degree, gear), it's also the sheer number of fresh ingredients often required. Desserts may actually lean more towards technique/time and less towards ingredients. I took a croissant class and produced at least serviceable croissants (with a chef correcting things here and there). But much as I like a hard to source fresh croissant I'm not going to routinely spend half a day making a batch.

[UIUC_06]

> Get a steel or aluminum plate for your oven. The conductivity can make up for a lot of the heat differential. Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach, but almost everything else is just fine.

I have a steel plate. An hour at 500F only gets it to around 400F.

Which is fine for pizza, actually, so you're right about that.

If you ask big US pizzerias (I don't know about the famous Naples ones) what temp they use, it's usually 650-750. At 900F you have zero margin for error.

[awithrow]

You can get a standalone pizza over for a couple hundred. I've got an Ooni and it gets up to 900 in about 15 minutes. Its obviously not for indoor use but its great nonetheless. It still takes a good bit of technique to get the dough and timing right but its great to be able to cook a pizza in little more than a minute.

[AlbertCory]

Have you actually pointed an IR thermometer at it? On mine (which I sold), it was 900 at the back and 600 at the front.

It was just too much trouble. A pizza steel in a kitchen oven, preheated, works very well; maybe not as good as a 700F oven but WAY easier. And 5 minutes instead of 1 minute is not a big sacrifice.

[throwaway2037]

Hey, this is a great post. I have read similar complaints about Ooni pizza ovens, where it is very difficult to achieve the 900F temp and impossible in the front. Great point about 5 mins vs 1 min.

Can you share: Do you think normie home cooks can taste the difference between a 5min and 1min pizza? I am unsure. For example, is the 5min pizza much drier? (I assume no.)

[__turbobrew__]

You cannot get the same leoparding on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside with a 5 minute pizza. If you are talking about normies than probably no, they cannot tell the difference but if you are detail oriented you can tell the difference.

My setup at home is a 20kg pizza steel and pre-heat it in the oven at max temp for at least 1 hour. Even with all that thermal mass I find the later pizzas take longer to cook due to the steel cooling off. You just cant put enough energy into a home oven to match the energy it looses during cooking.

Another tip is when the steel is maximally heated I find the rate of cooking on the bottom of the pizza is faster than on the top so I also turn the broiler onto max after I put in the pizza so the toppings get cooked at the same rate as the bottom of the crust. A delicate balance which requires continuous feedback.

[throwaway2037]

Real question: I see a lot of YouTube videos bragging about "leoparding" (spots on the bottom). Does it really matter? My point: Can you cook a pizza that tastes just as good _without_ "leoparding"?

    > My setup at home is a 20kg pizza steel and pre-heat it in the oven at max temp for at least 1 hour.

Sheesh. This is my second complaint about endless YouTube videos about the "perfect pizza at home": What is the carbon footprint per pizza? (Exception: I can forgive anyone who has a magical setup that is 100% electric and has solar panels / wind turbines to supply it! Also: Hat tip to any of the crazies that are producing their own green hydrogen at home via electrolysis for their hydrogen-gas-fired pizza oven!)

[__turbobrew__]

All of the electricity produced in my area is hydroelectric so the carbon footprint is minimal on a per unit basis. There are much bigger fish to fry when it comes to carbon footprint such as how often you fly and what motor vehicles you drive which use orders of magnitude more energy than a pizza.

At some level baking becomes an art form — a way to channel your efforts into a form of mastery. Does the leoparding make a difference? Probably not. It is the aesthetic and demonstration of mastery which makes leoparding desirable, much like how people desire perfectly manicured lawns and gardens.

[AlbertCory]

Thanks, you know, I think the brick oven pizza IS better. Yes, you probably could taste the difference. Whether the 5 min is dryer: maybe, could be.

My decision to sell my Ooni, after about 6 tries, was because my actual results were nowhere close to a pizzeria's, and way more trouble than my kitchen oven's.

Since you can't just open the door as you can with the kitchen oven, you have much less tolerance for error. In the kitchen, you just open after 5 minutes and decide, "OK, it's done" or "One more minute."

I guess I decided the brick oven pizzeria results are just not attainable at home. The kitchen results are damn good; way better than a frozen pizza.

[throwaway2037]

Great follow-up. Thanks! I never saw anyone comment like this: "you have much less tolerance for error". That is the key to understanding Ooni vs kitchen oven. Brilliant.

Have you tried Adam Ragusea's NYC pizza recipe? He gives a lot of sensible advice about how to get a great pie from a shitty kitchen oven!

[Larrikin]

Which model did you own? I haven't bought one but had been considering buying an almost unitasker because the reviews from trusted sources seemed very good. Serious Eats in particular seems to love the brand.

[UIUC_06]

I think it was the Koda, gas-powered.

It was a PITA. I don't miss it at all.

[imp0cat]

Yeah the taste difference is there, but you can get quite close even with a regular 500°F (~250°C) household oven and a longer time (4 with fan/grill + 4 minutes without in my case, YMMV). The basic tricks are to use a pizza stone, prepare your pizza dough a few days before (let it rest in a fridge) and do not go crazy with the toppings (less is more, too much stuff on top of pizza usually means soggy pizza - the top grill element can sometimes fix this, but not always).

[ghaff]

It's not perfect but those Naan flatbreads available in many US markets plus a pizza stone at 500 degrees F work fine for the occasional homemade pizza if I don't want to get takeout from one of a couple of local pizzarias. One of which is more convenient and the other is brick-over/better.

[joezydeco]

Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach...

Go look for the folks that hack off the safety latch on their self-cleaning ovens. It's kind of nuts.

[UIUC_06]

I've heard of them. I'd hate to have to explain that to my insurance inspector after a house fire, though.

[joezydeco]

Thankfully these miniature outdoor pizza ovens are taking some of the thrill away from the firestarters.