The Gozney Arc took almost 40 minutes to reach 900°F, but it still baked up beautiful back-to-back pizzas with leopard-spotted crusts in 90 seconds or less. Plus, it was super easy to use.
My husband has a love-hate relationship with making pizza (and outdoor pizza ovens). There’s the appeal of cooking outside and chatting with friends as you throw a pie—but there’s also the reality: torn dough, the propane tank running out, the pie coming out a little too charred. The night usually ends with semolina flour scattered into every nook and cranny and with my husband wondering why he thought slinging pizza all night (while guests mingle and drink beer) would be fun.
All that said, he still enjoys cranking up the heat and making some Neapolitan-style za, and any pizza oven that can streamline that harried experience, well, it’s worth something. I’ve long loved the Ooni Koda for its easy interface (just screw on the propane tank, turn the knob, and the heat gets blasting), so I was curious when Gozney released a compact domed pizza oven with a “lateral rolling flame” that replicates that of “traditional wood-fired ovens, distributing heat evenly and consistently,” per their website. They also promised this design would allow home pizzaiolos to “spend less time turning pizza and more time making memories.” Well, count me (and my husband) in. To test it, I made around a dozen Neapolitan-adjacent pizzas and a few calzones, burned through a tank of propane, and still ended up with semolina flour everywhere.
The Tests
Pizza Test: I made a dozen Neapolitan-style pies (some with sauce and cheese and others with pepperoni and salami). Before cooking them, I preheated the oven to 900°F, timing how long this took, and using an infrared thermometer to take the temperature of the pizza stone on the left, center, and right. I also timed how long it took for the oven to reheat to 900°F after throwing a pie, repeating this three times. I used the pizza peel and turner provided by Gozney to throw, turn, and retrieve the pizzas.
Calzone Test: I used the Arc to cook calzones, noting how evenly and quickly they baked.
Use Test: Throughout testing, I noted how easy the oven was to set up, use, and clean.
What We Learned
It Was Easy to Use, and the Size Was Spot-on
Like many gas-powered pizza ovens, the Gozney Arc was super easy to set up and use: twist on the propane tank to the connector hose, open it up, press and turn the dial, and it fires up. Adjusting the heat was easy, too, since you just had to turn the dial—my only qualm with it was that it spins a bit further north than needed since the max heat setting sits around nine o’clock. The smaller Arc oven I tested was also plenty big; I didn’t have any issues maneuvering the launching peel inside and even larger bakes, like calzones, fit nicely without being cramped.
It Took a While to Heat Up but Was on Par With Other Pizza Ovens
I used an infrared thermometer to find out how long the stone took to reach 900°F, which is a good heat for cooking thin-crust pizza. Since the burner is on the left side of the oven, that area heated up the fastest, reaching 900°F in around 27 minutes, while the center took around 38 minutes to come to temp. Because of the arcing flame, the right side of the stone also heated up faster than the center. For example, seven minutes into heating, the left side of the stone was 565°F, the center was 494°F, and the right side was 520°F. While there were differences, they were small and showed that the heating was pretty consistent.