Can we all agree that pizza is getting too expensive these days? And don’t try and tell us that it’s $40 because it’s priced accordingly enough to feed two people.. it’s a medium that I plan on crushing by myself. There has to be a cheaper alternative that allows us to take more ownership of our pizza cravings!
This was the headspace we were in a few months ago when Gozney miraculously emailed us asking if we would like to check out the newest limited edition yellow model of their Roccbox pizza oven. The outdoor pizza oven arrived on the doorstep shortly afterward. Still, as a Pacific Northwest guy, I had to anxiously wait for the Oregon rain to subside before having a chance to dive into cooking with this device.
Now that it’s the best time of year to be an outdoor-loving Oregonian, I’ve had a chance to use Gozney’s Roccbox pizza oven many times and feel comfortable enough to share my thoughts about what I’ve learned and what it’s taught me about pizza. So let’s dive in.
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What Is The Roccbox Pizza Oven?
The Roccbox has gained popularity among professional chefs and home cooks for its exceptional design, professional-grade performance, and accessibility. The portable pizza oven, of which the yellow model I was lucky enough to get sent in this review, enhances outdoor cooking experiences and adds a pop of color for entertaining. Capable of reaching and maintaining temperatures up to 950°F, it effortlessly cooks pizzas in just 60 seconds, making it a reliable choice for a wide range of events which we’ll be diving into here in a minute.
The Roccbox seeks to revolutionize outdoor cooking with its 19mm thick stone floor and dense insulation layers, mirroring restaurant oven proportions but on a smaller scale. It maintains temperature stability, enabling the preparation of multiple pizzas without any drop in heat. The dual-fuel oven comes with a propane burner and an option to snag a wood-fire burner, allowing you to choose between gas convenience or the traditional appeal of wood-fired cooking. Each model includes a complimentary Placement Peel, a tool for easy pizza transfer (completely for free, I might add). Tom Gozney, the brand’s founder, highlighted the limited edition Yellow Roccbox’s vibrant design as the perfect summer accessory, promising “good pizza and good vibes all around.”
What I Loved Most About The Roccbox Oven
Seeing as this was the first pro-quality pizza oven that we have been able to get our hands on and use extensively enough to write comfortably about in a deep-dive review like this, it was a bit overwhelming unboxing this thing and realizing how many unique features come packed into such a small oven. It could easily take ten pages of text to uncover everything we loved about this oven, so let’s focus on the four things that continued to impress us throughout the last few weeks of using and cooking with this oven.
It’s A Set Piece
We first busted this out to cook for the family, planning on making a couple of pizzas for my wife and kid. After that, and once we were a bit familiar with what goes into the process (there’s a learning curve, but we’ll get to that here in a minute), we invited the friends over to ramp up the pizza production by cooking for a whole gathering and pretty much had this thing running all evening.
And while the “looks” of a kitchen tool like this should never come second to the taste and functionality of the device, it’s hard to deny that this was a set piece in the backyard; both being fun to look at and even more fun to talk about. The kids loved watching the pizza cook (from a safe distance, of course), the friends were impressed by the novelty of it, and my wife loved the deep and vibrant color of the Yellow model.
Pizza always tends to be an event, and when you have the means to make it yourself at home instead of at the local pizza parlor, you want your tools to match the excitement and vibe of the occasion, which the Roccbox certainly does!
It’s More Than Meets The Eye
Gozney bills this pizza oven as primarily a backyard accessory, but I think they’re under-selling this! The portability factor (while not perfect, but we’ll discuss that here in a bit as well) allows you to take this thing with you on camping trips and other excursions like a day at the river. Suppose you enjoy camping in an RV or trailer. In that case, the Gozney is a perfect travel companion for all your trips and adventures, allowing you to get pro-quality pizzas without having to drive into the nearest town and pay an arm and a leg for pizza.
I could also see this pizza oven being an absolute game-changer in a music-festival campground spot, as long as you’re familiar enough with the oven to come prepared. Because often pizza ingredients are easy to pack and are reasonably non-perishable as long as you pack them appropriately, and while Boboli pizza crusts might not make the boujee Neapolitan pizza Gozney’s recipe book recommends, they will 100% be better, cheaper, and more fun to make than whatever sub-par pizza the food trucks in the festival grounds are making that day.
It Makes Pro-Quality Pizza
The biggest thing that holds back conventional ovens from being able to make the crispy and delicious pizza you pay top dollar for at your local pizza parlor is the fact that ovens don’t cook with direct flames and also can’t get hot enough to maximize the flavor and texture of the pizza dough. The average heat range of a kitchen oven can reach roughly 550-600 degrees, whereas the Roccbox can get cranked up to a consistent and even 950 degrees if you give it enough time (40 minutes or so) to get warmed up to that insanely high temp.
Gozney even supplied their own dough recipe for you to check out if you’re feeling adventurous! It’s beginner friendly, so it’s worth it for seasoned cooks and newbies.
And because of this insanely high temperature, once the oven is hot enough to cook it works its magic WAY quicker than I expected – oftentimes taking just a couple of minutes to cook compared to my conventional oven, which takes 15+ minutes.
…And More!
Of course, this thing will predominantly be used as a pizza oven, but at the end of the day, it is still an incredibly hot oven that you can use for whatever you want! Gozney’s chefs even added a couple of extra recipes into their book for tons of different options and include even more fun recipes, including Potatoe Buns and Smash Burgers, on their blog. I would highly recommend checking out all the other recipes that they offer, both as a source of inspiration and to be impressed by the artistry and love that the chefs and team at Gozney put into some of the fantastic food that’s cable of being made with such a small little oven.
What I Wasn’t Crazy About
This pizza oven is not for the faint of heart, and if you watch a couple of YouTube videos of pizza influencers (yes, that’s a thing) who use this oven, you might get the wrong impression or at least go into this oven with false expectations. So let’s take a minute to talk about some of the things that took some getting used to with the Roccbox.
It’s Got A Learning Curve
I watched 4-5 tutorials online about this oven before my first attempt to use it. All of the chefs and content creators on the platform made it seem incredibly easy to throw your pizza into the oven and watch the magic happen. And this might be true if you have years of experience in professional pizza kitchens; for the average person, it’s far from “plug and play.”
Luckily, the first attempt I made with this oven, using fresh pizza dough from Trader Joe’s, was done in the privacy of my backyard with nobody watching… because it was a bit of a disaster, and I made a complete mess going through what I thought was the same motions as the content creators on YouTube. It was discouraging, but luckily a fairly easy mess to clean up and try again with different dough and a much better level of success.
But this strategy impressed me with how easy this oven was to clean and made me try an easier pre-made pizza crust (the aforementioned Boboli). And when seeing just how easy that was to use and how amazing the pizza came out, a lightbulb went off in my head, telling me just how much of a game changer this oven would be at festivals and glamping setups if you followed this same strategy.
Further research also gave me a newfound respect for anyone who custom-makes their pizza dough, which is an exacting science. The water-to-dough ratio REALLY matters when using an oven this hot just because of how quickly the oven cooks the pizza, that the water inside the dough has very little time to evaporate. Fun fact, and not something I had even had to think about until I had the opportunity to work with this oven and get familiar with the process!
It’s Cumbersome
I’ve talked a lot about how portable this thing is. Still, I would only recommend bringing it with you on adventures where you don’t plan on moving far away from wherever you initially set it up – AKA your primary camping or glamping site. Because it weighs close to 44 pounds, and while the strap it comes with makes lugging it around a bit easier, it’s still not the lightest thing in your kit.
Adding on the fact that you’ll likely be needed a full-sized propane tank to power this oven means that it’s not something you would bring on the trail. But if you plan on setting it up at your campsite for a long weekend, it’s well worth the weight and energy needed to bring it along! This is due to the inclusion of the pro-grade materials (built-in cordierite stone, dense insulation, 304-grade stainless steel), which makes this specific unit a bit heavier than some other portable pizza ovens but is built to last and will crank out pizzas for years to come!
Who Is The Roccbox Pizza Oven For?
Most of this section will be rehashing the perks and features already outlined in this review, but in more niche and practical situations for those looking at buying an oven like this but unsure if the Roccbox is right for them. So let’s dive into who this pizza oven is best for!
Hosters
If you love having people over and entertaining friends and family in your backyard, this pizza oven is an easy recommendation for several reasons.
Firstly is because it simply looks fantastic, and the novelty of a small, DIY pizza oven like this is sure to spark a ton of fun conversations in which you can appear like an expert pizza chef as you walk your guests through everything you’ve learned about pizza-making while getting used to cooking with this oven. Plus, cooking the pizza is pretty low maintenance, as most of the time it takes to get it up and rolling will come in the 30-40 minutes it takes for the oven to get up to temp.
Secondly, the fact that it only takes a couple of minutes for this insanely hot oven to cook the pizza means that you can prep a lot of the pizzas ahead of time (or have your guests make their pizza), and they can be cooked and ready for eating in no time at all.
Pretty cool!
Thirdly, if you’re more of a hoster and not as much of an outdoor adventurer, their larger Dome model might be for you. It’s much bigger than the Roccbox, but it lets you make industry-grade pizzas in record time and will undoubtedly make you the belle of the backyard ball at your next party.
Glampers
If you’re heading to wine country for a boujee weekend or to Joshua Tree for rustic and off-grid comfort, this is a fantastic addition to your glamping setup. Because glampers are far from roughing it, you’ll likely have enough space, patience, and desire for comfort that this oven necessitates.
I will rope in music festival attendees as well into this one, as most of the essential ingredients needed to make a passable (and when using this oven, exceptional) pizza are pretty easy to keep in a cooler over a long weekend, meaning that you can avoid the $10/slice prices typically seen in venues. Plus, the fact that this thing weighs so much means that it won’t be a prime target for campsite creepers looking to nick valuables while you’re away from the site dancing (sad to admit this happens, but it’s a reality of music festivals these days).
You!
It’s a small pizza oven, meaning you can easily make a little percy pizza and have a blast doing it.
Plus, once you know how to use this oven, it doesn’t make much of a mess. I certainly made a massive mess my first time using it. Still, after those hard lessons were learned and the errors corrected, all of my future pizzas caused little accumulation of gunk, and only took a few extra minutes to clean the oven once it had cooled down.
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Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
