Electric BBQs stole the limelight last year, but this summer it's all about the Ooni Volt 12 Electric Pizza Oven. While most of the best pizza ovens require an outdoor space and the right weather, this indoor oven promises to help craft restaurant-grade pizza (depending on how good you get!) from your kitchen. It's quite the promise, and with a very damp summer predicted, it's an appliance that could come in very handy indeed.
It's a tremendously expensive buy, with a price tag of £944.00. It's also hefty, and not easy to stash away. But for those who don't have a garden but would love a pizza oven, it's a chance to get in on the party properly for the first time.
I've been trying out the Volt for the last few months and have been amazed by how easy it is to use inside my tiny London flat. This is how this oven has made fantastic pizza possible for me without a garden.
Ooni Volt 12 Electric Pizza Oven specs
- Fuel: Electric
- Power cord length: 115cm
- Weight: 18kg
- Pizza size: 12 inch
- Preheat time: 450°C in 20 minutes
- Dimensions: 69.7cm x 63.5cm x 36.4cm
Unboxing and first impressions of the Ooni Volt 12 Electric Pizza Oven
The Ooni Volt may be an indoor pizza oven, but it's not small by any measure. Our top-rated pizza oven ever, the Ooni Fyra, is used outdoors, and though it has a real height to it thanks to its chimney, it weighs 8kg less than the Volt.
So if you're envisioning this is the type of appliance you can use on the weekend and then stash away in the cupboard under your worktop, think again. Until I have the kitchen appliance garage of my dreams, I will struggle to store this oven.
That's why manoeuvring this box up the stairs to my first-floor flat when it arrived was a bit of a workout. If you can rope in a partner to help you with it, your back might thank you.
The oven comes with instructions on set up, and if you don't already have one, you'll need a pizza peel for launching your creations through the door. On its website, Ooni sells a peel of the appropriate size for £40.00.
Set up is pretty much instanteous. For day to day use, all you need to do is plug it in, switch the button on the right hand side to on, then press the 'power' symbol on the front panel and use the dials there to control the temperature and timer.
On my first use, I diligently followed the instructions to season the oven, which involves letting it get up to its highest temperature (which takes 20 minutes), then letting it cool. Then I powered it up once more to get cracking with pizzas.
In terms of design, the Ooni Volt is simple to wrap your head around. You have the cordierite pizza stone inside, and the door featuring a glass window to check on your pizzas as they cook. There's an internal light too, which means you can have full control of what's happening inside at any time of the day. The body of the Volt is powder-coated carbon steel, and the door is finished with stainless steel. It looks pretty smart on the whole, if not a little black box-y.
I've used the Ooni Volt several times now, both for an at-home lunch and for a pizza party. With a pizza topping station set up side-by-side, it takes up pretty much my dining entire table if I'm hosting, but on balance, it's great user-friendly appliance that everyone who is there for dinner can have a go at using.
Cooking with the Ooni Volt
For my first spin with the Ooni Volt, I made my own dough, which I think is all part of the fun. The Volt can fit 12 inch pizzas, so I set out shaping a pie of that size. I started out with a simple garlic bread, with the oven heating in the meantime.
I really like the timer feature on the Volt, which I set to 20 minutes, as it's perfect for reminding you to check on the temperature of the oven with its beeps. I was amazed at how quickly the temperature inside the oven amped up, and within the allocated 20 minutes, the optimum temperature of 450°C had been reached.
This is definitely the easiest set up of any pizza oven I've ever tried, as this is the first electric type I've tested. Though I was (needlessly) anxious about tripping the electricity and starting a fire, there were no such dramas. The oven just quietly and capably got up to temperature. And even though it's important not to store anything on the oven and to set it on a heatproof surface, I didn't find the oven got too hot to approach or have hands near.
So, with my garlic bread ready I launched it into the Volt, shut the door and watched it with awe from the outside. It's great fun to watch the crusts rise and the cheese melt inside, and the sheer power of the oven is quite the thing to behold.
Even though I had accidentally selected a strange type of mozzarella for my garlic bread, after just 90 seconds the bread was done and ready to eat. I fished it out of the Volt using my peel, which was very easy as it slots inside perfectly, and sliced up the garlic bread to eat. It tasted great and though my novice pizza making skills could definitely use some work, it was also a fun evening activity.
Feeling inspired by how easy the first pizza was, I set out to make a few more. Next up, in an effort not to overload (something I learnt about in our guide on how to get the most from your pizza oven), I opted for a simple mozzarella.
My dough was a little too inflexible for me to stretch it out as large as I wanted to, but the finished product was still delicious, and the base of the pizza cooked just as well as the top.
I was amazed at how easy it had been to get started and cook with the Volt. No fiddling around with gas or loading up a hopper, you can just get straight to throwing the pizzas in. It certainly makes a pizza party easier to organise.
For my last pizza of this batch I topped with salami and waited for the magic to happen, which it did, leaving me with a delicious end product.
The only issue I encountered throughout the process was that any excess cheese that spills over the sides of the pizza, or loose toppings, will burn on the exceptionally hot stone, meaning there's a fair bit of smoke.
In the summer, when I was testing this oven, it was fine to have the windows wide open, but in the winter when I tried it previously I did struggle with my smoke alarm after something burnt onto the stone, so keep ventilation in mind when the Volt is in use.
I live in a flat, so while I'm perfect to test out the indoor advantages of the Volt, I haven't tried it outside. But it is designed for outdoor use too, and has an outdoor-safe plug. If you want an indoor oven for most of the year but want to cease on any sunshine that the British summer offers us, it's a good failsafe option.
Cleaning the Ooni Volt
The Ooni Volt needs time to cool down once you're done with it. The brand recommends turning off the appliance at the panel but then keeping it plugged in without flicking the switch on the right hand side, in order to allow the internal mechanisms to cool the inside of the oven.
Once the oven is fully cool (I waited several hours), I cleared any debris left inside using a clean cloth. As detailed in our explainer on how to clean a pizza baking stone, it's important not to get the stone wet at any point, and instead, Ooni recommends simply flipping the stone over and cooking on the other side during its next outing. Any residue will burn off the other side the next time you use it.
How does it compare to similar pizza ovens?
The top-rated pizza ovens from Ooni we've tried thus far have all been outdoor. One of our favourites is the Ooni Karu, which is multi-fuel (meaning it can run on gas and wood). It puts on a mightily impressive performance, and when using pellets, you'll get that authentic wood-fired flavour too. It's not as easy to set up as the Volt though, and can't be used indoors. It comes in at a more affordable price too, with an RPP of £699.
Another electric pizza oven that's proved hugely popular is the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven. Ninja's big selling point is how easy its appliances are to use, and that's certainly the case with Woodfire. Our expert reviewer said she would buy it for the pizza function alone, but it can also roast joints of meat, smoke and bake. Our reviewer used it to bake brownies. Though we think it's a star buy, it is not suitable for use indoors, which is where the Ooni Volt is so groundbreaking.
Should you buy the Ooni Volt 12 Electric Pizza Oven?
The Ooni Volt is pricey, but it's also the only pizza oven I've ever been able to try out inside, and as someone who lives in a garden-less flat, that simple fact goes a long way.
It's so easy to use, and there's essentially no time needed to get the hang of using it. All of the pizzas I cooked were fantastically done and I had no issue getting the oven up to temperature and keeping it there. The smoke element may put some people off, but if you have a better ventilated kitchen than I do, or can afford to keep your windows propped open, it probably isn't a dealbreaker.
Pizza lovers who already have an outdoor oven but want a quick and easy set up they can use indoors will also love the Ooni Volt. It's a thing of wonder to be able to create pizzas this good in your own kitchen, if you're willing to fork out for it.
