Kevin Hansen
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Ooni recently launched the second generation of their gas-powered oven, dubbed the Koda 2. By cooking multiple Neapolitan and New York style pizzas in the Koda 2, I learned that this oven is small but mighty. I will share with you my unboxing and cooking experience below.
Compared to the older Koda 12, the Koda 2 retains the sleek look but comes with an updated burner, a thicker stone, larger cooking area, and an optional digital temperature hub. The hub syncs via Bluetooth to a phone app so that you can monitor the temperature of steaks or similar foods.
Unboxing & Design
Getting from unboxing to turning on the Koda 2’s flame for the first time is quick and easy. There’s basically no assembly required. You just have to remove it from the packaging, unfold the legs, put the stone in, insert a battery for the ignition, and get it connected to your propane tank.
As a side note, I love when manufacturers manage to pack their products without relying on Styrofoam! You can see in my video review that the oven is packed nicely with recyclable paper products without any damage to the unit.
The Koda 2 is light for a 14-inch oven. Once unboxed, it weighs just over 35 pounds, which makes moving it around easier than I expected when I first looked at it. The stone is just over half an inch thick with a tapered shape that’s roughly 14.75” wide in the center and 14.6” deep. The size does mean that if you’re trying to cook a full-sized 14 inch pizza, you need a pretty precise launch to keep it in the cooking area.
To provide more even heating, Ooni updated the burner with a tapered flame that’s a bit lower in the center and higher on the sides. One thing I don’t love about the burner is this: if you’re using a brush to clean debris or bench flour off the pizza stone, it’s a tight squeeze to fit your brush in the back while the oven is hot.
How’s the heating?
The Koda 2 heats up fast. As you can see on the graph below, I started on a mild rainy day at about 56 degrees. After 20 minutes of heating, the surface of the stone was measured at over 800 degrees with my trusty infrared thermometer. By minute 30, I was measuring around 900 degrees. The burner provides a wide range of flame intensity. It goes from “so low it doesn’t really do the job for pizza” all the way to “raging hot”—hot enough to get some nice leoparding on your pizza. It’s nice to have the option to pick the heat level appropriate for the food you’re cooking.
How’s the performance?
For my high temperature cooking test, I used my 65% hydration, poolish Neapolitan pizza dough, and decided to make some white pizza. On my first attempt, it turned out great. I launched the pizza in around 800 degrees with a full flame, and it was done in maybe 60 seconds. A favorite pizza of the night was the below pictured broccoli rabe pizza.
For New York pizza, I made a 62% hydration dough that had cold fermented in the fridge for three days. I made 12-inch pizzas instead of 14-inch pies and used more traditional toppings. Like usual, I launched my pizza in the oven and killed the flame until the bottom of the dough firmed up a bit, and then turned the flame up to medium instead of low. This three-cheese and Calabrian chili pizza was probably my favorite of the bunch.
Final Thoughts
The Koda 2 is a wonderful compact-sized oven. It’s lightweight, but it’s still big enough to produce a 14-inch pizza. That’s very unusual because most small pizza ovens can only make 12-inch pies.
If you have experience with cooking pizza, you’ll immediately be making high quality pies with the Koda 2. But I can also recommend this oven to beginners; it seems like it would be an excellent oven to learn on.
As I mentioned, the flame is capable of going lower than you might be used to from other ovens, so you’ll just have to get used to that through experience. Other than the difficulty of brushing the stone while it’s on, I don’t really have anything I can nitpick about this oven. Ooni’s got a real winner in the compact pizza oven space with the Koda 2.
