How To Make A Pizza in Your Outdoor Pizza Oven

Getting Started with your Outdoor Pizza Oven

Outdoor pizza ovens, like the Pi Prime from SoloStove, can be daunting to use for the first time. Managing sticky dough, sauces, toppings, and avoiding a burnt crust can be intimidating. The goal of this guide is to help first time users of the Pi Prime Outdoor Pizza Oven feel prepped for the process.

Equipment you’ll need:

• Pi Prime Outdoor Pizza Oven
• Wood Pizza Peel
• Metal Pizza Turner (Pi Turner 2.0)
• Cutting Board

The Pi Prime will work on almost all sturdy tabletops—including large plastic tables—with no risk of melting or burning the surface underneath.

Equipment you’ll want

• Instant Read Thermometer Gun (can be found on Amazon for $15 and under)
• Pi Pizza Rocker Blade

One common mistake is trying to cook without the proper equipment. A metal pizza turner changes the game and helps avoid ending up with one burnt side and one undercooked side.

Ingredients you will need for your pizza

• Pizza Dough
• Sauce
• Cheese (low moisture Mozzarella usually works best)
• Toppings
• Cornmeal

While all these ingredients are necessary to bring your pie to life, cornmeal is critical for sliding the pizza off of the peel and into the oven. Without it, the dough will stick to the peel and make the transition messy.

Prep work for assembling your pizza

To get started, grab your dough of choice. It’s important to note that your style of pizza (Neapolitan, New York Style, etc.) is critical for measuring how long your pie should bake in the outdoor pizza oven.

For the cheese, low moisture, part-skim mozzarella works well for all pizza styles. Specifically, it’s the best cheese for Neapolitan style pizzas as it has a higher water content. Fresh mozzarella found in ball form can be shredded with a box grater or pulled into pieces by hand. Shred it with a grater prior to assembling your pie.

When it comes to pizza sauce, a regular tomato sauce will stand up to the high heat of an outdoor pizza oven best. Pesto and other sauces can be used but may yield varying results. Homemade pizza sauce is easy as pie to whip up with canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and a few herbs and spices. Store bought sauce is an easy option in a pinch—and is still super tasty.

Working with the dough can be delicate due to a number of factors like the gluten development, temperature of the dough, and style of pizza. Neapolitan-style dough will be more difficult to work with, as it has stronger gluten development and is a relatively sticky dough.

Before shaping the dough, make sure to generously dust your pizza peel with cornmeal. Once the peel is prepped, shape your dough into a circle. The easiest way to do it is to pull and rotate, pull and rotate. Once it’s been formed into a circle, place it on the cornmeal-dusted pizza peel.

When the dough is on the peel, it's time to build your pie. Add all the sauce, cheese, and toppings your heart desires.

Baking your pizza in an outdoor pizza oven

As previously mentioned, your style of pizza and dough determines the temperature you should cook at—and for how long.

A Neapolitan-style pizza can be cooked in 90-120 seconds, but the oven needs to be at 900 degrees fahrenheit or higher when the pie goes in.

New York-style pizza cooks best in the range of 550-650 degrees fahrenheit and takes about 4-7 minutes to get the perfect crisp.

Rotate your pizza every 20-30 seconds with the steel pizza turner to prevent the side closest to the flame from burning.

Remove your culinary masterpiece when the crust is golden brown, some dark spots are developing on the edges, and the toppings are cooked through. Let it rest for a few minutes before slicing and serving up the flavor.

Following these steps with the recommended equipment can tremendously help making artisan-style pies in an outdoor pizza oven easy—even for first-time users. Check out our blog for more pizza tips and recipes.