Gozney ArcXL Pizza Oven

I’ve been down the pizza rabbit hole for about 8 yrs now. I absolutely love making pizza at home for friends and family.

When I started in pizza there was no Gozney or Ooni pizza ovens, or if there was, I wasn’t aware of them. So, I built a brick oven, wood fired pizza oven in my backyard, and it was great, for a while.

Until I became aware of the Ooni pizza oven, the size, mobility, quality of the cook and cost. This just made sense, for the person getting into pizza at home. Now people will say, can’t you use our home oven to make pizza at home? The answer is yes, and they make great pizzas in certain styles. But to make Neapolitan style you need to reach temperatures you can’t in a home oven.

But lets be honest, if you’re going to make pizza at home, you want a pizza oven. There’s something about cooking pizza in oven where you see the flame, you have to turn the pizza, and you manage the cook level. The experience in any dinning and drinking event adds to the enjoyment of that meal or beverage. When you’re cooking in a pizza oven the experience for the chef, and eaters of the pizza is sky rocketed.

I’ve had the Gozney ArcXL for a little over a month, and I’ve done a lot of cooks on it. There is a learning curve, like all new toys, but its a short curve if you have experience. If you a newbie, the curve is a little bigger but still not bad, you’ll be making great pizza in no time.

I have the Ooni Koda 16, and have been cooking on it for about 2.5 years. It’s a great oven, makes great pizza but it is a few years old. In wanting to upgrade, Gozney caught my eye, I love the Dome from Gozney but at $2K that wasn’t going to happen. Specifically because I would cook with wood or coal, I like gas. Then there was the SR1 Dome at $1499, but still pretty steep when I paid $500 for my Ooni. That’s when I heard Gozney was releasing a new oven at $799 and it was capable of 16” pizzas. I knew that was the oven for me, it still has a dome style look, stand is optional as well as a booster (which is cool) for a table or countertop.

Now, how does it cook? It’s freaking awesome, by that I mean it makes fantastic pizzas but the experience cooking on it is so much fun. The quality is fantastic, the stone is 20mm compared to Ooni’s 15mm. This added size in the stone helps retain more heat and lets me cook pizzas back to back without waiting for the stone to reheat.

The technology in the burner is a pro-sumer (professional grade for the consumer), this thing is a beast. The name arc is accurate, the flame arc’s over the entire oven and cooks the top of the pizza perfectly. You can also control the arc flame with precision with the knob on the front of the over.

I recently cooked 10 pizzas for my wife’s office for lunch, and the ArcXL handled it with ease.

If you are on a $1000 or less budget for a pizza oven at home, this would be the oven I would recommend to you.