If you love homemade pizza but don’t like the hassle that comes with it, an electric pizza oven may be the ideal upgrade. THE Ninja Artisan Outdoor Pizza Oven is aimed at people who want delicious pizza nights without having to deal with things like propane or wood pellets, unlike many other pizza ovens.
I have to start this review by admitting that I’m not a pizza connoisseur, but I have ended up with quick restaurant-style pizzas using the oven, thanks in large part to its simplicity and easy-to-use design.
The oven plugs into a standard outdoor outlet and reaches 700°F. It should be noted that although it is electric, it is not suitable for indoor use.
It offers five pizza settings: Neapolitan, New York, Thin Crust, Pan Pizza and Custom that you can quickly switch between. It comes with a pizza stone capable of cooking 12-inch pizzas. Although I found the 12-inch size to be perfect for me and my husband, some may wish they had the option to make larger pizzas when feeding a larger crowd.
Since the oven has heating elements on the top and bottom, pizzas cook evenly and consistently without the need to rotate the pie, manage a flame, or constantly monitor the cooking process, especially once you become familiar with the different modes.
Much like the cooking process, the setup was pretty simple. All I had to do was remove the oven and pizza stone from the box and packaging, plug it in, and start the preheating process.
I first tested the Neapolitan setting, which raises the oven to its maximum temperature of 700°F and can cook a pizza in just three minutes. The oven took about 20 minutes to preheat and it beeped to let me know it was ready. I made my first pizza on the pizza peel that Ninja sent me next to the oven (sold separately), and I was able to easily slide it onto the pizza stone inside the oven.
After that, you just need to press the “start” button to start cooking the pizza and start the timer. While the pizza is cooking, you can set the timer using the dial if you want to cook it for a custom time.
Although I kept an eye on the pizza through the small front window and internal light to make sure it wasn’t burning, the three-minute cooking time ended up being perfect, leaving me with a pizza with an airy crust, puffy edges, and slight charring. The airy crust is something I’ve never been able to achieve when making homemade pizzas in my standard kitchen oven.
For the Neapolitan pizzas I made later, I didn’t have to monitor them and instead relied on the timer to beep and let me know when they were ready.
It’s worth noting that if you’re looking for that authentic wood-fired flavor, you won’t get it with this oven. But if you are satisfied with consistent and reliable results, then this oven is perfect for you.
I also tried the New York setting, which sets a lower temperature than the Neapolitan setting and provides a longer cooking time. I used this setting for a topping-heavy pizza to get even cooking and more cooking in the middle. With this setting, I had less char on the crust, which is what I was looking for.
As for cleaning the oven, it is quite simple and low maintenance since you don’t have to worry about soot from an open flame. The interior can be easily wiped with a damp cloth to remove crumbs and light messes. For the pizza stone itself, I scraped off the debris once it had cooled, as you are not supposed to use soap on a pizza stone as it is porous and can absorb water and potentially crack or break when exposed to high heat.
What I love most about the pizza oven is that homemade pizza night no longer feels like a weekend activity. Making pizza at home used to seem like too much of a project for a weekday, so I saved it for occasional weekends. But with how fast and easy the Ninja Artisan Oven is to use, homemade pizza now seems like something I can make quickly after work without it feeling like a task.
I think the pizza oven is worth buying if you want to make restaurant-style pizza at home without the complexity of traditional pizza ovens.
The Ninja Artisan Pizza Oven costs $300 and comes in four colors: green and gold, blue and gold, black and gold, and dark gray.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Before joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecoms journalist at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honors degree from the University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.
You can contact or check Aisha’s outreach by sending an email aisha@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message to aisha_malik.01 on Signal.