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Blackstone made a big splash on the pizza oven scene last year when they released their updated pizza oven after an absence. It was one of the first ovens to have a rotating pizza stone to make pizza cooking easier and is the only oven with two pizza stones to lock in the heat. When Blackstone sent us one, I was interested to see how it performed.
It’s a great looking oven that has a real quality feel to it. Unlike other ovens, you can buy it with a cart to sit on to add convenience. The cart keeps your propane tank hidden away while also offering a place to put your pizza peel while not in use.
Features and Specs
- Retail price of $999 (check price) – it goes on sale
- Stainless-steel, double-walled cooking chamber for heat retention
- A pizza stone on the top and another on the bottom
- Rotating lower stone to make cooking easier
- Big enough for 16″ pizzas and other food
- Temperatures over 900 degrees F
- Electronic ignition system for easy starting even on cold, windy days
Assembly
Putting together Blackstone’s pizza oven is on the difficulty level of putting together a gas grill, so I’d budget 2-3 hours. Don’t expect to just take it out of the box and use it like some smaller pizza ovens. The cart has to be assembled, along with the innards of the oven to make the stones rotate.
It’s a two-piece design and comes with legs for the pizza oven itself, in case you wanted to take just the oven with you somewhere. Having two pizza stones is great for cooking, but it also makes the oven heavy. Get a friend to move it onto the cart and save your back.
Cooking
With a 16” pizza stone, there’s tons of space to cook on. You can see my puny 10”-12” pizza sitting on the stone in the picture. The size of the stone and opening means there’s more room to cook other food besides pizza.
Since the oven comes with a peel, it’s ready to cook with out of the box. I would recommend buying an infrared thermometer though because the thermometer on the oven isn’t telling you the temp of your stone.
The idea behind the two stone design is the lower stone retains heat to crisp up the crust and the upper stone retains heat to properly cook your toppings. It’s a good design and makes excellent pizza.
The rotating lower stone makes the process of cooking on the oven easy because you don’t need to be good with the pizza peel. Flour your peel, then make the pizza on the peel itself, and all that’s left is launching the pizza in the oven. The rotating stone will make sure your pizza is evenly cooked.
I was amazed by the power of this oven. The burner roars like a jet engine to heat the stones and your pizza. Unlike other ovens where you have to wait a little while to use them, this one is ready to go pretty quick.
With the power of the burner and the superior heat retention, you want to keep an eye on temperatures to dial in how high the burner is. I learned this the hard way where I let it sit on high too long only to have a completely black crust.
Pros
Power
There’s no way you would want more heat than what this oven delivers. Maybe if you’re using it for glass blowing? For making pizzas or searing steaks though, it has more than enough power.
Convenience
I love that the oven comes with a purpose-built cart for the oven. It’s much easier to use than having your own table to work with. It also normally hard to find a place for pizza peels because they’re big. The cart solves that with a home for the peel.
The convenience of the oven also extends to the cooking process with the rotating stone. Like a turntable in a microwave, it’s much easier than having to rotate your pizza every 20 seconds.
Looks
I really like the look of the Blackstone Pizza Oven. It stays true to the Blackstone aesthetic but has a polished look to it with the finish of the metal, the knob they used, and the overall rounded design.
When the pizza oven is closed up, like in the photo above, it gives off major Darth Vader vibes. That’s a bonus for the Star Wars Fans out there.
Cons
Learning Curve
The main con with the oven is something that you’ll overcome while you use it. It has a little bit of a learning curve with how much heat it produces. It can easily torch your pizza, so you have to gain some experience with it.
It also cooks a little different with the two stone design. I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s a good design, but it’s different to have more heat retention on the top. If it’s your first pizza oven though, you wouldn’t know any different.
Thermometer
For the first pizza I cooked on this oven, I didn’t use an infrared thermometer and relied on the on-board thermometer. I think that was a mistake because it made me think the oven was much cooler than it actually was. If you cooked on the oven enough, you’d learn how to work with it, but I wouldn’t suggest going through the burned pizzas in the process.
Conclusion
The Blackstone Pizza Oven is a great option for anyone in the market for a pizza oven, especially if you want a larger oven for a reasonable price. Like a 16-year-old with a Corvette, you have to respect the power of the oven to get good results. Once you do though, you’ll be easily making great pizzas effortlessly with the turntable design. If the Corvette is a little more than you need, Blackstone does offer a Camaro option in a smaller pizza oven.