I was already a homemade pizza fanatic by the time we moved to Italy from London. Though I spent culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu studying fine French cuisine, my husband and I relied on simple weekly homemade pizza nights to get us through the strict pandemic lockdown. It was during those weeks that turned into months that I experimented with and perfected my sourdough pizza recipe. Once lockdown eased, I traveled extensively around Italy to do research for the cookbook-memoir I was writing and to track down my great-grandfather’s birth certificate.
In November of 2020, we moved from London to Puglia in southern Italy to obtain my Italian dual citizenship, ancestry papers in hand. We found a tiny, unexceptional apartment in the charming and picturesque medieval seaside city called Trani, in the heel of the boot.
In our new reality, we were not only faced with the necessity of language proficiency (almost no one could speak English) but also adopting its foodways: a sweet nibble and caffè for breakfast, a significant and leisurely lunch (followed by a nap), and dinner that started around 9 p.m.
It was living there, walking along the uneven cobblestones and breathing air that smelled of the Adriatic Sea, where I began making and eating the best pizzas of my life with the locals we befriended. I realized my delicious dough was only the first step towards making a perfect pizza. It was also about the simplicity of the toppings, the fresh, quality ingredients used, and, crucially: the gorgeous brick oven that baked the pizzas to perfection.
I learned that homemade pizzas (mine included) could be next-level delicious if I just had access to an extremely hot oven, which cooks the dough incredibly quickly, therefore achieving a pillowy yet blistered crust and impeccably just-melted cheese.
When we moved back stateside to Brooklyn, New York, with a kitchen oven that doesn’t go beyond 500 °F, I thought my prime pizza-making days were in the past. Then I discovered the Ooni Koda 16 Gas Powered Pizza, a Wirecutter pick we’ve deemed “the most convenient and user-friendly portable outdoor pizza oven we tested.” It delivers the high heat my husband Connor says my dough “deserves,” in a convenient and space-efficient device that fits on my terrace.
