Hohollaa Wood Pellet Pizza Oven 12"

I just bought this Hohollaa 12″ Wood Pellet Pizza Oven off amazon and have only used it two times so far so this will be an ongoing post updated when there is more to add.

I picked this pizza oven because the price was about $50 less than the alternatives on amazon and more than $150 less than the Ooni pizza ovens. It had some little extras like the window to peak in at the flame and a thermometer built in. Here it is setup on my gas fire pit – its a pretty good fit and no worries about heat build up underneath it this way.

I am using Pit Boss brand classic wood pellets that come from walmart in a 40 pound bag for $15. The stove itself holds about 3 cups of pellets and once lit and warmed up will need about half a cup of pellets every 4 minutes to keep going. I have no issues maintaining 850F with these pellets and within 20 minutes the stone is over 800F. My big first time mistake with the stove was using store bought pizza dough. That led to instant blackening of the pizza crust and bottom in less tha 30 seconds. It turns out you need a dough with no sugar and oil added to handle the heat. By switching from store bought to using Ooni’s dough receipe, I had no issues with instant buring. Also, one of my conerns when buying was that 12 inches was not going to be big enough, but it turns out that making many smaller pizzas allows better control of cooking and turning and there is less of an issue if you burn a pizza.

After cooking 10 pizzas in the oven, the techniques I found work best so far are:

Add pellets 3 minutes before a new pizza goes in.
When ready to cook a pizza, remove the door and put the pizza on the stone as close to the edge as possible to avoid uneven burning.
Every 20 seconds take out the pizza, rotate 90 degrees and put it back in until done.

I did not have luck cooking with the door on because it chars the crust so quick. Within 20 seconds you can hear the cheese and sauce start to bubble so with the door closed you just cant react fast enough.