Have a Backyard Pizza Party with the Ooni Karu

Are you tired of being stuck at home, with a bleak and uneventful summer stretched out before you? Well let me tell you about something my family recently acquired, that has been loads of tasty fun. We got an outdoor Ooni Karu pizza oven! I joke that this has improved the quality of our lives…. but I mean it! Making DELICIOUS, wood-fired pizza in our own backyard has quickly become a fun highlight of our week.

Around my house we’ve been a bit bored, and feeling sad about the COVID-19 altered summer stretching ahead of us. It may sound like an exaggeration to say the Ooni Karu pizza oven has been such a fun and exciting addition, but it’s true.

We were already die-hard pizza lovers. But this has truly taken our pizza eating to the next level of yum!

Have a Summer Backyard Pizza Party!

One thing I didn’t anticipate was that having an outdoor wood-fired pizza oven would become the launching pad for a perfect outdoor party with friends and family. For us, it’s created some super fun, socially-distanced backyard parties that my family has thoroughly enjoyed.

We had an outdoor make-your-own pizza party with my extended family with our Ooni Karu. I told them ahead of time that we had a new wood fired outdoor pizza oven, and that it made delicious pizza. But they were still blown away by the restaurant quality, and amazing taste.

I made the dough earlier in the day, and divided it into portions for us to each build our own pizza however we wanted. They cook so quickly in the Ooni Karu, that this worked perfectly for everyone to build, cook, and enjoy their own wood fired pizza.

Then I just had toppings available, and we each made our own favorite pizza. The biggest topping hits were the basil leaves and fresh mozzarella, which are classic toppings for a traditional Neapolitan style pizza. You can load on more toppings, but if your pizza gets too heavy, it’s hard to slide off the “peel” and into the oven.

So much yum!!

Ooni Karu Pizza Oven

I was a bit daunted at the thought of building a small fire inside the Ooni Karu pizza oven. There are gas models, but I felt we wanted the full experience and flavor of a wood-fired pizza…. cooked by a wood fire!

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Ooni is very easy to use. Granted, we go camping and my husband owns both an axe and a smaller hatchet. We usually have firewood laying around. The pieces need to be cut to a small size, around 6″ x 1.5″. If that is not a doable option, you can also use charcoal, or purchase the gas attachment.

From what I’ve read, the key is heating the oven to the optimal 925 degrees, and cooking your pizza quickly on the oven’s cooking stone surface. Using wood generates the most heat.

The oven is so hot, that it cooks your pizza in 60 seconds!

You slide your pizza off of a “peel” (flat pan) and leave it sitting directly on the hot pizza stone. The heat is pretty even and intense, but it appears to cook hottest at the back, so you rotate it a time or two. Then slide the pizza out on a peel. I recommend having a couple of Ooni peels, one to build your next pizza one, and one to use for cooking.

The pizza’s can range in size from 12″ – 16″, so my family members each make their own. They cook so quickly, this is easy to do for everyone at your backyard pizza party!

Delicious Wood-Fired Pizza at Home or Camping

I worried that making the pizza dough from scratch may be tricky to accomplish. But I followed Ooni’s online recipe, and it turned out perfectly on the first attempt. It’s SO fun and delicious… my kids now ask me all the time for “Ooni pizza”!

We’ll definitely be hosting more of these COVID-19 compatible, outdoor backyard Ooni pizza parties this summer. And it’ compact and portable enough to also take along camping. Which will be awesome!  Now we won’t have to miss our Friday Night Pizza Tradition when we camp. Woo hoo!

I highly recommend heading to your local Ace store and adding an Ooni Karu outdoor pizza oven to your backyard or camp site.  A bonus is you can get Ace Hardware curbside pickup or delivery, and start making those delicious wood fired pizzas right away.

Also be sure to take a look at some of the other Ooni products, which that may help with your success in using your Karu pizza oven. I love the box of natural fire starters, and use one little compact nugget each time to start my fire. They have a gorgeous and helpful Ooni “Cooking with Fire” cookbook. And you’ll definitely need a least one pizza peel,and I actually recommend getting two. I have one Ooni bamboo pizza peel with a handle, and one super thin Ooni Aluminum pizza peel which worked really well to rotate cooking one pizza, while building the next one.

Enjoy and have fun! And don’t forget dessert… the remaining embers work perfectly for roasting a marshmallow or two!  🙂

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This post was sponsored by Ace Hardware, and I received a complementary Ooni Karu for the purposes of review. All opinions are my own.