The other day I got an Ooni Koda 12 gas-fired pizza oven and was really, really excited. While I’m working on perfecting my pizza making (the first pizza came out pretty good, but the crust wasn’t as crisp as I would like), the second pizza we tried to make was a pizza disaster. Toppings everywhere, stuck to everything. So the question came up, how do I clean this thing? A little research and a disbelieving me found out you just leave the pizza stone in the pizza oven, crank it up to high, and leave it for 30 minutes. So what happened?
A pizza stone can be cleaned with even large amounts of stuck-on food residue by heating it in the pizza oven for at least 30 minutes. Once the stone has cooled after the long bake, brush it off and a cleaning miracle has occurred. If the stone still has some burnt-on food debris, turn the stone around and bake it in the pizza oven on high for another 30 minutes.
My pizza stone came out amazingly clean, given what it had gone through. I didn’t really get why, since so much food had been stuck to it. This is what I found out.
The Pizza Disaster
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has a saying – doesn’t matter, still pizza. Which is great, since it means that even if you mess up the shape or rip the crust, or whatever happens – if it’s still edible, it’s still pizza. Unfortunately there are times where you just mess things up so badly the pizza can’t be saved. That happened to me with my second pizza on my new Ooni Koda 12 (link is Amazon). Two pizza in! There wasn’t enough flour/cornmeal on the peel (since we were using the perforated peel that came with the Ooni, and we’re used to wooden peels) and the pizza stuck while I was sliding it off. Too much of a jiggle and the whole thing folded right over itself onto the stone.
I honestly thought I had ruined the oven and would be scrubbing it out forever. A detailed Google search later, and Ooni recommends blasting it in the pizza oven at max for 30 minutes to remove the debris. I had nothing to lose so I decided to give it a shot.
What Happens During the Cleaning Process?
Everything lights on fire.
Seriously, the pizza oven just lit all the left over sauce, cheese, and toppings on fire.
A gas-fired pizza oven will heat to 700-900 degrees Fahrenheit, which is enough to first dehydrate and then combust almost any food that you’re going to find on a pizza. Leave it long enough, and it’s going to char those left-over bits and pieces into non-existence.
What’s really amazing is how clean the stone gets after this process. While a stone is porous and will absorb things like water and soap residues (so don’t ever use soap on your pizza stone), the high heat removes stuck-on debris really well.
Since the back of the oven is hotter than the front, you may have to heat the stone more than once to get it clean. After 30 minutes, let the stone cool completely, pull it out and turn it around, and heat it for another 30 minutes on high. When that’s done, brush the stone off and an amazing amount of debris has been removed.
The Results after 60 Minutes
After 60 minutes I gave the stone a quick wipe and this is the result. There is still a little work to do on this stone, but some brushing and a little gentle scraping cleared the rest of the char off the stone.
The next set of pizzas were delicious!
