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The Oni Rotating Pizza Stone can help you leave burnt pies a thing of the past.
There’s a moment every home pizza maker knows: The raw pie is peeled, the oven is scorching hot, and it seems like the whole thing could go bad in seconds. Getting it clean is one thing. Rotating them inside at 900°F so they cook evenly is a whole other problem.
crocodilethe leader in the home pizza category, has released a rotating stone to help both amateur and experienced home pizza makers just in time for summer. I tried it to see if it offered a noticeable improvement to my at-home pizza oven routine. Here’s everything you need to know about what’s new Oni is a rotating stone And why am I hooked on the upgrade.
Why is it spinning? Understand how a pizza oven works
Not having to manually rotate your pie in a 700 degree oven is a nice thing.
If you were to compare pizza made in a traditional pizza oven and pizza with a rotating pizza stone side-by-side, you might not notice much of a difference at first — assuming you followed the instructions correctly, of course. With traditional pizza ovens, although high internal temperatures can cook a pizza in just a minute or two (depending on how thin the crust is), you’ll still be expected to reach into the pizza peel and rotate the pie by hand every 20 seconds or so. Even then, inconsistencies can occur.
Rotating the pancake by hand requires your full attention. However, results can be varying.
This is necessary because of the way a typical pizza oven works. To appreciate the effectiveness of Ooni’s new rotating pizza stone, it’s important to understand the atmosphere of your pizza oven. Essentially, as heat radiates upward from the preheated pizza stone at the base of the model, convection and radiation also act, circulating superheated air in a vacuum cyclone. While this is incredibly effective at cooking pizza in just a minute or two, it also creates hotter and cooler zones within the oven. This means that a 20-second delay in rotating the pie can leave you with black, blistered spots on one side and slightly puffy, undercooked dough on the other.
What a rotating pizza stone does in the pizza making process
My Ooni Koda 2 with rotating stone installed.
With the new Oni Rotating Stone, you can get the benefit of flipping your pizza without having to flip it. All areas cook evenly, even if you can’t put the pizza on the stone. Each edge and pocket gets equal time in the hottest areas of the pizza oven.
This is especially useful if you’ve ever gotten frustrated with peeling pizza. Maneuvering anything in a space of more than 700 degrees can be unnerving enough already. Having to do this repeatedly, hoping not to accidentally push your pizza against the walls of the pizza oven or onto the edge (in models with a gap between stone and chamber), can cause your internal temperature to rise.
The rotating stone gives each edge of the pizza equal time in the hottest part of the oven.
On the one hand, it’s a relatively minor detail — pizza ovens cook so quickly that it’s hard to call rotary stone technology a real time-saver, especially since you probably shouldn’t walk away while the pizza is cooking anyway. On the other hand, it helps in achieving maximum consistency, which matters a lot when something is cooked so quickly.
If you also use your pizza oven to roast foods like meat, potatoes, or vegetables, a rotating stone isn’t quite the same as a rotisserie—it can’t flip anything for you—but it does eliminate the need to constantly reposition or sizzle a heavy cast iron pan while cooking.
In short, anything that reduces the number of times you need to manually stir food inside an appliance that routinely reaches 800 degrees is a plus.
And not for nothing: if you cook alone, it also saves enough time and attention to photograph the pizza as it cooks.
Assembling the Ooni Rotary Stone is surprisingly easy
The rotary stone motor is installed at the bottom of the kiln.
If you already own an Ooni Koda 2 model – either Coda 2, KODA 2 Pro or Code 2 Max -You’re lucky. The rotating stone insert can be installed in your existing oven and is priced between $329 and $399, depending on your specific model. It is also possible to purchase the Ooni Rotating Stone as a bundle with one of the Koda 2 oven models, which range in price from $799 to $1,649.
When it comes to installation, just a quick glance at an Ikea-style instruction manual usually gives me hives — at least until I slow down and process what I’m actually looking at. While the Ooni Koda 2 Pro pizza oven includes written instructions along with diagrams, the rotary stone manual is entirely drawing-based. I was terrified at first, but then quickly realized how simple the setup actually was.
Setup was relatively simple.
A removable plug on the bottom of any Koda 2 model provides space for the battery-powered unit that drives the rotating stone, which mounts to the kiln using four existing mounting holes and the included screws. The rotating stone itself sits atop a two-piece metal wheel, along with two or four additional stone sections that fit around the sides to create a continuous cooking surface within the pizza oven.
Working Rotating Oni Stone: Easy to operate, but there are many ways to rotate
Admittedly, things get a little more complicated here. The rotating stone is actually very easy to use, but with multiple settings and different ways to turn it on and off, it’s easy to get confused.
The rotating stone unit connects to the pizza oven’s digital temperature hub, so you can turn it on and off using the primary button on the hub. I found this to be the easiest way to manage the stone, with one tap to turn it on or off. There is also a button on the base of the rotating stone unit, which when pressed for a long time, turns it completely on or off (it can also be used as a temperature axis button to start or end rotation).
You can activate the rotating stone using the primary button on the axis.
A motion sensor located on the lower front of the rotating stone unit also allows you to wave your hand in front of it to turn the rotor on or off. However, in practice, I found this feature to be inconsistent and inconvenient to use, as you have to move your hand into the narrow space between the center of the temperature and the rotating unit to operate it.
This placement is supposed to prevent the sensor from being triggered when something passes in front of the oven. However, I can’t really imagine a scenario where your hands are free enough to wave underneath the oven, but not free enough to simply press the button on the center of the temperature, which is much easier to reach.
Getting your hand to turn on the motion sensor can be awkward.
Another confusing aspect of the rotating stone is that it also includes a preheat mode — intended for either oven warming or “rotisserie-style” cooking outside of pizza — in which the stone rotates 90 degrees every five minutes. This setting can only be activated by double-pressing the digital temperature axis or the rotating stone unit itself, while triple-pressing turns the motion sensor on or off.
There is a small indicator light on the motion sensor to show which mode is active, but it’s not easy to see when you’re standing in front of the oven because the sensor is located behind the center of the temperature. As a result, it’s easy to think you’re in one position – or that you’ve turned off the spinner completely – only to be surprised when the stone suddenly starts moving on its own.
On several occasions, after turning off the gas and stepping away from the pizza oven, I returned to find the stone still rotating on its own, perhaps because I accidentally left it in the preheat/broiler mode or inadvertently triggered the motion sensor. Since the motor is powered by batteries, you need to pay attention to make sure it actually turns off when you are done cooking. Otherwise, you may end up counting a fixed supply of AA batteries toward the total cost of owning a rotating stone.
Ooni rotating stone results
I got more consistent peels using the turning stone.
However, there is a noticeable difference between pizzas that are not rotated at all, those that are rotated by hand and those cooked on a rotating stone. The consistency and ease of use that the Ooni Rotating Stone provides is hard to match. If you already own a Koda 2 and use it regularly, the upgrade price will be relatively small to pay for more uniformly cooked pizza.
