Here at Fresh Coast Cabins, we love wood-fired pizza so much that we decided to make it ourselves. Because what could be better than eating a pizza cooked outdoors next to Lake Superior?
Step one was finding our new pizza oven. After doing enough market research to make any sane person cringe, we chose the Ooni Karu portable pizza oven. We are in love! Here’s why.
Portability
The Karu’s portability is our favorite feature—weighing in at 26 pounds, we can easily move it to different parts of the property depending on where we want to cook. It fits in the car no problem, making it super easy to bring to another location when we want to cook for just the two of us or with family and friends.
The deliciousness factor
We’ve never had a pizza this delicious that we made ourselves! Our Ooni Karu consistently cooks bubbly, cheesy pizzas with all the flame-cooked flavor, perfectly cooked toppings, and crisp stone-baked bases you’d expect from a pro. Plus the satisfaction of making it ourselves gives it that something extra. Yumm!
Versatility
The Ooni Karu is a small, portable pizza oven that packs a big punch. It’s wood-fired or propane-fueled, which means we can have our pizza faster, slower, or in inclement Keweenaw weather. Our absolute favorite way to use our Ooni is to share it with our cabin guests! When Friday night at Fresh Coast comes around, folks gather around the communal firepit for our (in)famous guest drink exchange and we fire up the Karu so guests can cook their own BYO pizzas. Bonus: Pizza cooks in 60 seconds or less so everyone gets a turn!
Cooking outside
Cooking (and eating) outside makes everything a little more adventurous, and adventure is our love language. Nothing beats a fresh-cooked Superior pizza after a long day of adventuring in the Keweenaw. Ooni’s Karu model is perfect for life at Fresh Coast Cabins and they offer several more pizza oven options depending on what you want and need.
What we’ve learned cooking with the Ooni Karu Pizza Oven
Learning to cook your own pizza outside is no joke, but we’ve done some of the dirty work for you and are here to share with you what we’ve learned along the way.
Practice, practice, and more practice
Like learning how to cook anything for the first time, wood-fired pizza is no different when it comes to learning new things. It took us a lot of attempts and experimentation to get it right, so don’t get discouraged when it’s not perfect the first (or fifth) time around.
It’s all about the dough
Don’t skimp here, it will ruin your pizza! Check out Ooni’s simple recipe for the perfect pizza dough, every time. When we’re at home cooking for ourselves, we make our own dough. On BYO pizza nights at the cabins, guests typically use store-bought dough.
Mind your ingredients
While it’s tempting to load up your pizza with a ton of delicious toppings, less is more so that your pizza doesn’t get too heavy which makes it tricky to get into the oven. Mozzarella cheese has a lot of moisture, so adding too much can leave your pizza weighed down and soggy. Sprinkle just enough to cover the sauce to keep your crust crispy.
Prep your station
Once you get going with your pizza prep, things move surprisingly quickly! We learned how important it is to have a well-prepped pizza station before we started. All your ingredients and cooking tools have their place.
Read more from Ooni about their 10 tips for launching the perfect pizza. You’ll also find a ton of other resources on their website that really help us out!
The Bottom Line
Whether you’re new to the wood-fired pizza scene or an old pro looking for a new tool, we highly recommend investing in an Ooni pizza oven. We’ve been extremely impressed with ours and know that we’ll have it for a long time to come. We think you’ll love it too!
Please drop us a line if you have any questions or want to share your favorite recipe. We’d love to hear from you!
The Fine Print
We independently research and hand-select everything ourselves. Just so you know, Fresh Coast Cabins collects a share of sales and/or other compensation from the links on this page.