Customer Ratings & Reviews

Few things taste as good as a freshly-fired pizza from your favorite local joint. If you, like me, were curious about replicating this experience at home this summer, you've probably looked at one of the many wood-fired pizza ovens available for home use. If you, also like me, live in an apartment, you probably immediately dismissed the idea of a wood (or gas) oven for any number of reasons. Ninja's burgeoning line of outdoor cooking appliances aim to offer the same cooking experience using electricity, and when I saw they'd developed a pizza oven, I jumped at the chance to try it out. I've heard great things from my friends who have pizza ovens, and the idea that it's at least marginally portable gave me hope it might work in an apartment situation. The Artisan Pizza Oven arrived in typical Ninja fashion, which is to say a large box with splashy graphics advertising the machine inside, and an unfortunate amount of styrofoam and plastic wrapping. Everything was tightly packed, though, and the included pizza stone was safely nestled where it couldn't be broken. The Oven itself is on the heftier side at 30 lbs or so, but the weight is fairly balanced and the metal is a matte finish so it's easy to grip and lift. I was immediately impressed by the quality Ninja went with here: the bulk of the oven is metal, with a nice gray color on the body and stainless on the door. The legs and control panel are black plastic, but high-quality, and the cord is nice and thick with a GFI built into the end for safety. The inside of the oven is gleaming, shiny stainless, although that'll change pretty quickly on first use. This particular model includes a 12" square pizza stone -- again, high quality -- and a nice metal roasting pan as well. Ninja appears to offer a line of accessories to go with the oven to help you get it set up and use it the way you want to. The only must-have is a good pizza peel to transfer your creations into and out of the oven; you'll want to pay close attention to the internal oven dimensions, though, as the peel has to fit in easily. The stone is exactly 12" wide and there's only a small bit of space on either side for the peel. Setup is very straightforward with no assembly. The first thing you'll want to do is identify a hard, stable surface to place the oven on. Although it reaches 700 degrees internally, the bottom of the oven and the legs stay very cool, so I wouldn't worry too much about melting or burning anything (so long as it's not touching the metal directly). In my case I found a folding metal camp table that fit the oven perfectly and folds completely flat for storage. Ninja includes both an instruction manual and a quick start guide full of recipes to get you going and I highly recommend reading both. As it uses electricity you just plug it in and select your settings using the buttons and knob on the front. I decided to try the classic Neapolitan recipe, which should give a nicely crisped bottom crust with lots of big air bubbles and a soft inner. The recipe book is pretty specific about preparing your pizza so it's ready to go in immediately, so I definitely recommend setting the oven to preheat before you take anything out and get cooking. It takes 20-25 minutes, depending on your heat settings; this is helpfully laid out in the included documentation. I tested this unit with my mom, so we each made a pizza using chilled dough from the store and a mix of fresh ingredients: pepperoni and shredded cheese for her, sliced mozzarella and sauce for me. I'll be honest, this first round was a great learning experience, and you should be prepared to make mistakes. Our first mistake was prepping our pizzas at the same time; her pizza went in first and turned out just like the photo in the book, while mine sat for just a few extra minutes and as a result stuck to both the peel and the stone. She used an appropriate amount of sauce, while I used too much; this not only made the dough stickier, but ran off the edges and caused quite the burnt mess while cooking. In the end, we had one soft yet crispy Neapolitan pizza, complete with scorch marks and bubbles, and one wrinkled, lumpy, watery mess. The "perfect" pizza tasted amazing, nearly as good as something you'd get in a restaurant; the messy pizza was still surprisingly edible, but definitely not something you'd want to serve to others. After finishing we let the Ninja oven cool overnight so I could clean it safely. The pizza stone definitely has some big burn marks on it, but the soot brushed off easily. I was also able to get the melted cheese and sauce off the door with just a few sprays of all-purpose cleaning solution, which I attribute to the glass and shiny metal construction. After cleaning comes storage, and I'm happy to say the Artisan Pizza Oven stores neatly standing up on its back legs. The cord wraps around easily and clips to itself, and I was able to place the instructions, pizza stone and baking pan in a soft fabric storage bag and put them right inside the oven. I wouldn't transport it this way, but for sitting on the closet floor it's worked out great and doesn't take up nearly as much space as I feared it might. Overall, the Ninja Artisan Outdoor Pizza Oven is a high-quality appliance purpose-built for cooking pizza, with the ability to proof bread or broil/sear meat with the proper accessories. Actually making pizza requires planning and practice, but once the oven is hot it can cook quickly back-to-back, which is perfect for a build your own pizza party. The oven stores neatly and since it uses electricity there's not wood or gas to mess around with, ideal for apartment living. If artisan pizzas at home sound like your thing, I highly recommend giving this oven a try.

Hello friends and welcome to my review of the new Ninja - Artisan outdoor pizza oven. I want to start by going over a few things I think are good about this unit before explaining why I don't recommend this unit. First off the oven is Ninja quality it appears. It is built like there other appliances with plastic and metal parts thru-out. The inside is polished stainless steel and looks nice right out of the box. The control panel is crisp and clean and works as it should. The display is easy to see in most any light situation. And it does get hot when you turn it on, preheats pretty quick as well. Secondly I want to say that the recipes for dough and basic pies is really good. I tried making garlic knots from the recipe book and they turned out good. The dough recipe that I tried making twice, both times worked well. A little better than the dough I have been making for years in a bread machine. So I was surprised by what followed after this. This unit is a base model, and has no accessories. There is no pizza peel, or stand. Both of these items are needed to use this pizza oven. So if you need those items, pick some other pizza oven kit. Also if you are a rookie at making pizzas, maybe pass on this one. During my first pizza attempt I managed to spill toppings in to the oven. On my second attempt I did the same thing. The unit is small and there is little room for error . Then the unit says wait for it to cool before cleaning. I did that and then the spilled toppings turned to concrete inside. The unit says to not use anything metal to clean it or the stone. Also don't use water or soap. That is fine except it doesn't work at all to remove anything. I tried everything including a chunk of hardwood to scrape out the burned on stuff. Nothing worked, until I used a metal object to scrape it off. Same issue with the stone nothing would touch the burned on stuff except a razor blade. As if that were not enough to make someone pass on buying this. The learning curve for this unit is out of this world hard. The recipe book makes little to no sense on how to go about using this thing. It's supposed to be easy but it's a giant pain! The instructions do warn you about things that are easy to mess up. However they fail to mention how horrible it is to figure out and how messy it really is. So impossible to clean, hard to use and overall just not fun. I wanted to like this oven and bake pizzas all summer. Unfortunately, it has failed miserably in my opinion. So i do not recommend this to anyone.

This has my kids exited to make their own pizzas. Just be careful temps are crazy high.