A Guide to Ooni Karu 16’s New No-Open Pizza Door

Say hello to the latest addition to the Ooni Karu 16 family: the Pizza Door for Karu 16. Designed to help you cook lots of pizzas more efficiently, this door has a postbox-style slot to make launching and retrieving your pizzas easy.

With a door that’s always open at the bottom, you don’t have to worry about opening and closing your door between cooks, which means you can keep stretching, topping and slinging pizzas without pause.

Because it was designed for easy high-volume cooking, the pizza door works best with our Ooni Karu 16 Pizza Oven Gas Burner, which is the fuel we recommend when cooking for a long time (over an hour). The gas burner keeps a strong convection cell going even with a door that’s only half-open.

“Why not just leave the regular Ooni Karu 16 door open?” True, that would mean an uninterrupted cook, but it would also lead to heat loss (try it and watch the thermometer).

Let’s go back to convection cells for a minute. Basically, your oven’s convection cell is what allows it to get as hot as it does. Here’s what’s going on: when fuel burns at the back of your Ooni, the energy (heat) caused by combustion rises to the top of the oven. It rolls across the roof, sending smoke up the chimney. Then the heat curls back on itself when it meets the door, turning your oven into a hot hot hot zone.

If you leave the door fully open, the convection cell is “broken.” Heat escapes out of the front and your oven temperature drops (or it takes longer to heat up in the first place).

Our new pizza door means you can cook without opening and closing the door, so you preserve that all-important convection cell.

If you leave the door fully open, the convection cell is “broken.” Heat escapes out of the front and your oven temperature drops (or it takes longer to heat up in the first place).

Our new pizza door means you can cook without opening and closing the door, so you preserve that all-important convection cell.

So how do you use the Pizza Door for Karu 16? Installation is simple, and you cook pizza the same way you would with any Ooni oven.

Using the Torx key, remove the regular Ooni Karu 16 door hinge screw from the hinge block. Repeat for both sides and gently remove the door from the oven body.
Store the full door in a safe place.
If the Ooni Karu 16 Pizza Oven Gas Burner is not already installed, remove the fuel tray before attaching the pizza door.
Attach the pizza door, ensuring the door hook is correctly positioned over the door pins on the oven body.
Slip the washers included with your new pizza door over the screws, and then fix the pizza door to the oven body by screwing the two door hinge screws into the hinge blocks.
If it’s not already installed, attach your gas burner and connect it to your propane tank.
Open your propane tank valve, turn the dial at the back of the burner to ignite the gas, wait 15 minutes for your oven to heat up, and start cooking!