Gozney Tread Review: Small, Mighty, & Great for Camping

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Released back in March, the Tread is Gozney’s latest design for making pizza on the go. Their marketing portrays the Tread as an oven to take to the great outdoors, but you could just as easily take it tailgating or to a park for a kid’s birthday party. How does the Tread stack up against other smaller propane pizza ovens? Thankfully, Gozney sent me a media sample to review. As usual, I’ll give you my honest, no BS opinions, while also covering the optional accessories they sent.

Unboxing & Design

The Tread is quick and easy to get unpacked and running. There’s basically no assembly involved other than putting the metal guard over the lateral burner, and loading a battery for the ignition. This oven is light—weighing just under 30 pounds due to the aluminum-steel frame. Plus the sturdy handles on top make carrying the oven easy. While the Tread does have small rubber bumpers on the bottom for cooking on a table, Gozney offers a special stand for the Tread, which I’ll cover later in this article.

In many ways, the Tread is basically a smaller, lighter Arc oven. It’s got this 12” cooking surface on a half-inch thick stone. The lateral burner sends the flame rolling over the top of the oven, which turns the Tread into one of the fastest heating ovens I’ve tested. After just 15 minutes, the surface of the stone was already over 850 degrees Fahrenheit. And by 25 minutes, it was just under a scorching 1000 degrees. I didn’t bother checking any longer than that.

I don’t normally test how quickly ovens cool down, but Gozney specifically mentions that the Tread cools quickly. So I tested how fast the temperature drops both on the pizza stone and the exterior of the oven’s top. As you can see on the graph, by around 20-25 minutes, the exterior of the oven had cooled to around 130 degrees Fahrenheit, which is cool enough to touch without burning yourself. The carrying handles don’t really get hot.

Performance

These things I’ve mentioned are well and good, but how does it cook? I started with my usual 65% hydration poolish to make some Neapolitan-style pizzas. My first pizza was topped with burrata filling and thinly-sliced pork belly, and finished with dollops of homemade pesto. The pizzas cooked quickly with the flame a bit below maximum flame (this is a very hot oven), and I got great leoparding on the crust.

The Tread does a great job with Neapolitan-style pizza, but how well does it handle New York style? These days, when I make New York-style pizza, I use a 61% hydration dough that is 25% bread flour and 75% hard all purpose flour. The way I make New York-style pizza with these powerful gas ovens is by launching the pizza when the stone is 650-700 degrees.

Next I kill the flame for a while, allowing the bottom of the crust to firm up and darken. Then I bring the flame back on low to finish it, rotating as it cooks. I kind of forgot how quickly the Tread heats up, so my first pizza came out with char that looks more like New Haven style apizza. My later attempts came out looking more like a proper New York-style pizza. But the Tread has a tendency to cook a little bit hotter than what is ideal here.

Optional Accessories

In Gozney’s marketing, they heavily feature the unique stand that is called the Tread Venture Stand. It weighs 13 pounds and has four individually adjustable legs. There’s a bubble level on top so that if you’re camping on uneven ground you can adjust the legs to try to get the most level cooking surface possible. The oven connects with a quick-release latch, and you can rotate the oven 360 degrees to turn the opening away from the wind. My stand arrived with one of the feet not attached properly to the leg. I contacted Gozney, and they sent me a repair kit to fix the problem. It just took a couple minutes to make the fix.

Gozney also sells a roof rack that attaches to the handles on top. It gives you a surface to prepare your food or place your hot pans while cooking. If that sounds useful to you, then you should go for it.

The Tread Mantel makes less sense to me. Gozney says it’s useful for rotating pans in the oven, but I don’t really see how it helps. I have no problem maneuvering a cast iron pan in the oven or resting it on the edge without the mantel attached. But your mileage may vary. Lastly, there’s a stylish carrying case. If you’re going to be regularly lugging your Tread around, along with other cooking gear, I see how it can be useful especially with the extra pockets. The case is made with durable padding, and it’s a great place to store the oven when not in use.

Final Thoughts

So what does this mean when it’s all put together? The Tread makes great Neapolitan. It works very well for New-York-style pizza. But at the lowest flame, the oven wants to creep up too hot for an ideal NY-style pie. Finally, this lightweight oven heats up fast, and cools down almost as fast, allowing you to move it to wherever you need to cook. I like the Venture stand a lot, but I don’t really see the point of the Mantel. When it comes down to brass tacks, the Tread is possibly the best 12”-sized pizza oven out there.