The Gozney Tread just dropped – my tests found a nearly perfect pizza oven, but it's not as portable as it looks

No one is thinking about cooking pizza outdoors right now. It's cold and dark and pizza ovens seem like a big expense after the holidays. Most brands wait until the spring to launch new models, but Gozney just jumped the gun on the competition by launching the Gozney Tread.

The Tread is marketed as a portable pizza oven, designed for taking on the go. It has two innovative features I've never seen on pizza ovens before. There's a roof rack for holding tools and pizzas, and a tetrapod stand, which means you can set this oven up on almost any solid surface.

I was lucky enough to get an early sample before the oven comes out on March 11th, so I put it through our usual suite of tests. I tested everything from a classic cheese pizza to chicken thighs to brownies to see how it could handle different ingredients.

I found a very good oven for the price. The pizzas from the Gozney Tread can rival those from the best pizza ovens in the world. It's neat and compact, perfect for small backyards. However, I'm not convinced that it's truly portable.

Specifications

Unboxing

For such a compact oven, the Tread comes with a lot of parts. It arrived on a pallet and it needed a lot of maneuvering to get it all out into my yard. That said, it came with everything I needed - a pizza peel, a turning peel (so you don't have to turn a hot pizza with your hands), and a stand to mount the oven on. For what it's worth, the matte finishes on the boxes and thick black polystyrene make this feel like a premium product. However, these are all press freebies, and every one costs extra.

The stand is a particularly helpful feature. It was easy to set up - if you've ever used a camera tripod, it's exactly the same principle - and it has a spirit level in the top so you can ensure that your pizza oven is level. You can use it without the base, too, but I think the stand is a huge advantage. Unlike any other pizza oven I've tried, you can use it all over the yard without a table or a wheeled stand, so it's a great option for homes without much space for a pizza oven table, or homes without paved parts of the yard.

There's also a roof rack, which is a genuinely game-changing feature. Whenever I've cooked in a pizza oven I've found that I need somewhere clean to put down a turner or a peel, and the roof rack offers just that - a heatproof space for hot tools, and you can also set a pizza on there.

I also received a mantel, which extends the surface of the oven to make it easier to use. This was the only glaring issue - the bottom of the mantel had been badly machined, so was slightly sharp to the tough. However, it was great help when cooking chicken.

Overall, it was the easiest setup I've had for a pizza oven. It took about half an hour; the only screwing was to attach the Venture Stand attachment to the bottom of the oven and attach the battery for ignition and the gas line. After that, it needed half an hour on max heat to cure and I was ready to cook.

Test 1: Cheese pizza

This oven reached temperature in 15 minutes - very fast, similar to top of the line pizza ovens and slightly faster than Gozney's original oven, the Roccbox.

I mixed a simple dough and topped it with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and cheddar for our most basic test: a cheese pizza.

The Gozney made an incredibly good cheese pizza. The crust was well crisped, the sauce was cooked and didn't make the pizza soggy, and the cheese was golden and melted. As pizza goes, it's very close to perfect.

Only sticklers will notice that the burner is so close to the pizza, even with the guard, that you need a turner on hand. The crust next to the fire chars pretty much instantly, unlike in ovens with the burner at the back where flames roll forward to cook the pizza. However, the turner I used isn't included as standard.

Pizza obsessives will notice that pizza made in this oven is not as good as the Ooni Karus top line Ooni just because there's no door. It means that the dough was slightly drier and tougher than dough made in the Ooni. While the thermometer is very helpful, it doesn't give you the stone temperature, just the air temperature in the oven, and it doesn't measure in precise degrees.

However, it's really only the sticklers that would notice. Though this is bested my much more expensive ovens, I think it's perfect for couples or small families.

Test 2: Pepperoni

I repeated a similar process with a pepperoni pizza. Though it's a similar test, pepperoni helps us to see how an oven can handle grease.

Just as with the cheese pizza, the pepperoni pizza was excellent - it's not the best pizza I've ever eaten, but you'd be happy with it in a restaurant. Pizza aficionados will find that the crust crisps slightly faster than the top can cook, which makes for a tiny mismatch in texture, and while the base was slightly overcooked, there were some patches of undercooked dough because of the moisture content of the sauce and grease. The pepperoni burned slightly, too.

However, these are very minor issues and only noticeable when trying to find flaws. As with the cheese pizza, this is a very good pizza, just not perfect.

Test 3: Flatbread

It's also important to try pizza ovens on other dishes, becuase otherwise you spend a lot of money just to cook pizza. One of my favorite tests is to try a mediterrean-inspired flat bread. This lets us see if the pizza can cook dough without sauce without drying it out, and it can also show how well the oven can cook vegetables. I made a simple flatbread dough and topped it with goat's cheese, rosemary, red onion, and a homemade balsamic glaze made with vinegar, honey, and olive oil.

The result was fantastic. The oven did a great job on the dough because there was less moisture from the sauce or greasy pepperoni, so the dough was perfectly moist. Sticklers would find that the goat's cheese couldn't quite brown enough before I had to take it out and the arugula burnt slightly. However, it was very good, and on a par with much more expensive ovens.

Test 4: Chicken thighs

Another classic test is to use the pizza oven to grill chicken. It's simple to cook and shows how they handle slightly more complicated meat dishes under an open flame. I cooked chicken thighs with rosemary and onion in a hot skillet. However, I found a few issues on this test.

The first is that this oven is so compact that the hot oil in the pan splattered everywhere - over the walls, the stone, and up the small flue at the front of the oven. This isn't a huge deal - the inside of the oven is so hot that it won't spread germs - but it's a pain to clean the flue.

More worryingly, the Tread stand struggled with the extra weight of the skillet. It was perfectly stable, but as I grabbed the skillet handle I noticed that the entire oven would wobble on the stand. I double-checked the instructions and there's no way to tighten the Tread on the stand, so it would have to wobble. This isn't great for safety.

However, the chicken was delicious. The skin was crispy and charred, and perfectly cooked. Again, food snobs might find that the chicken was slightly drier than top-line ovens, and had less of the classic smoky smell, but it was delicious, well-cooked chicken.

Test 5: Calzone

We also test calzones in pizza ovens. Thicker dough means a much tougher test for the oven, as does jumbled up ingredients that are covered from an open flame. I made a simple calzone with the usual sauce, mozzarella, and cheddar, and added some pepperoni and arugula before closing the calzone and put it into the oven.

It did an excellent job for an oven of this size. The inside was slightly undercooked, but I thought it would be for an oven this compact. The outside charred well, and all the ingredients inside were properly cooked. The only issue here is that the calzone needed constant turing because the flame is so close. However, it's another tiny issue. The actual meal was delicious.

Test 6: Brownies

Finally, we always make brownies. It seems odd to bake in a pizza oven, but any oven should be able to handle a batch of brownies. We had excellent results when cooking with the Gozney Arc, so I was excited to see if we could replicate them here.

Unfortunately, this was the worst test of all. Even on the lowest possible heat, the brownies were overcooked on top. However, the middle was perfect, so while the results were far from perfect, the brownies were far from inedible.

Cleaning, storage, and maintenance

Like all pizza ovens, the Tread doesn't need much cleaning. You can't really clean a pizza stone, so that takes away a lot of the hassle, and the exterior is easily wiped clean of chicken and pepperoni grease.

It's remarkably compact, much more compact than any other pizza oven we've tested, and the stand is telescopic, so it folds away neatly. It's not tiny, and you'll need to give up a least a square foot of storage space for it, but it's much neater than other ovens on the market. You will also be able to buy a carry bag for the oven to make it easier to put away.

How does it compare?

The Tread launched yesterday, and it isn't even available to buy yet. However, we can get a lot out of comparing it to a very similar oven from a competitor, the Ooni Koda 12:

You can see in the table above that, while evenly matched, the Tread has a lot of advantages over the Koda 12. It takes up much less room despite making exactly the same pizza size, and it also has a handy thermometer, which is missing from the Koda 12. It varies depending on the weather outside, but the Tread appears to be slightly faster at heating up than the Koda.

However, the Tread's listing as a 'portable' pizza oven is called into question by the weight difference. The Tread is one of the easiest ovens to maneuver, and the handles and weight distribution mean it's much easier to move around than any Ooni oven I've tested. However, it's still a full 10 lbs heavier than the Koda 12, so it's still not easy to lug around.

In the end, I think it's a better buy than the Ooni Koda 12, and when this oven drops I'll have to amend our rank of the best pizza ovens. It's a great option for small families.

Should you buy it?

I think the Gozney Tread is a must-buy for small families with some money to spend on a pizza oven, but only if you buy the stand. The Venture Stand is by far its best innovation because it means you can set up a pizza oven in almost any part of the yard. It's as comfortable on a grass slope or gravel as it is on a perfectly level patio, so it's perfect for homes with growing kids where patios might get cluttered with toys or lawns turned into bogs with kids running over the grass.

I also love the size – it's small enough to take up a quiet corner of a yard, unlike the bigger Gozneys and Oonis which can completely dominate a space. It's all a family of four needs to make some pizza. I was also incredibly impressed with the safety features. You should never touch the exterior of a pizza oven, but when I measured, the sides and top of this oven never exceeded 115°F, so it's surprisingly safe.

However, do not buy this if you want to take it camping. Despite the marketing, I'm not sure you can call this portable. It's a fantastic oven, but it weighs 30lbs. That's not heavy, but it's not light, either, and that doesn't include propane. Don't expect to strap this to your back and take off on a hike for pizza in the wilderness. You can drive it to a lake, and the tripod stand will make it much easier to use, but you can't carry it up a mountain. It's a lot more portable than other pizza ovens, but only if you drive it most of the way there.

How we test

We put all pizza ovens through a wide range of tests. Frist, we assess how easy they are to assemble, and if there are any potential issues for those with mobility issues or disabilities. Next, we see how long it takes for the oven to warm up.

Then, we test every oven on a huge array of different dishes. We always make classics like cheese and pepperoni pizzas, as well as desserts like brownies and more complicated meals like chicken to see how well an oven can cope with different ingredients.

For more detail, take a look at how we test.