Pellet-Powered Pizza Oven With Robust Wood FlavorS
Are you an artisan or Neapolitan pizza enthusiast? I highly recommend the Pellethead PoBoy wood pellet pizza oven if you want to make wood-fired pizzas fast.
Few things are tastier than a homemade pizza cooked over real wood fire. What I love about this wood pellet pizza oven is that it bakes a pizza in under two minutes. Having used the PoBoy multiple times to bake pizzas, I can attest to it being able to cook pizzas and meat better overall, provide better flavor, and prevent smoke from getting in your eyes more efficiently than other pizza oven options available on the market.
Pellethead PoBoy Pizza Oven Overview
The PoBoy has an adjustable chimney stack that allows better draft and pulls the flame across the food. The design is portable overall, and features a removable chimney and collapsible legs.
Comparison to the Ooni Fyra
When compared with the similar Ooni Fyra, the PoBoy provides a double insulated wall and stainless steel body, a top wooden carrying handle, and four collapsible legs for better stability. The Ooni Fyra has a single insulated wall with powder coating, no carrying handle, and has three collapsible legs instead of four.
Watch our video here for a complete comparison of the Ooni Fyra vs the Pellethead Poboy Pizza oven.
Watch Our PoBoy Cooking & Pro Tips Video
PoBoy Overview Video
Today, I’m going to cover everything you need to get your PoBoy pizza oven up and running, why this is such a great oven, safety measures to take, temperature tips, and more. Note that the PoBoy is not limited to just wood-fired pizzas. You can also cook virtually any kind of meat like steak or chicken, vegetables, and more.
Watch the video here for a detailed overview.
Pizza Oven Tips
Getting the Fire Started
Getting your Pellethead PoBoy pizza oven fired up is quick and easy. This oven gets super hot, so you’ll want to set the oven on a sturdy stainless steel, brick, stone, or concrete surface. To get started, you’ll need to put hardwood pellets into the burnpot. One of the cool things about pellet-powered pizza ovens is that there’s lots of different pellet types out there. There’s hickory, mesquite, apple, cherry, oak, etc. For this review, I’m using maple pellets. Next, I’m going to break off a few small pieces of fire starter and put right on top of the maple pellets in the burnpot. Then, I’m going to light a match or lighter to get the fire started.
Once the fire has started, I’m going to place the burnpot into the PoBoy. Next, I’ll detach the wooden handle by turning it clockwise. Pull down the top section (which is your hopper fuel loading point as you add your pellets every 60 seconds or so) and pay close attention to the fire.
Using the Barbeque Fan
The barbeque fan is one of the accessories that’s included with the PoBoy. The reason Pellethead includes the barbeque fan is so that instead of allowing the natural convection cook with the draft, this fan forces a small amount of air out of the fire. This allows the PoBoy to reach peak temperature in about half the time than if we were just to allow a natural gravity flow. The barbeque fan has a simple on/off switch. To use, we’re simply going to insert it into a circular hole in the burnpot. When you turn on the barbeque fan, you will start to see the fire enlarge and some black smoke rise out of the PoBoy.
Using the Digital Laser Temperature Gun
As the barbeque fan runs, walk to the back behind the chimney to check the temperature gauge. You’ll want to utilize another accessory that came with your PoBoy (our digital laser temperature gun) to assess the temperature more precisely on the pizza stone. Use the digital laser temperature gun to determine when the stone is hot enough for placing pizza or other food on there.
While waiting for the PoBoy to heat up, you can go ahead and open the front door to check on how everything is looking inside. You’ll want to make sure you have a nice, steady inner baffle flame rising over the unit in the back. To help get the proper draft flow, you can adjust the telescoping chimney height as needed.
Adding More Pellets
As mentioned earlier, I’ll add small amounts of pellets every 60 seconds or so to ensure the fire keeps going. I am not adding too many to snuff out the fire, just enough to keep our fire strong. Definitely invest in a pair of fire-resistant gloves to protect your hands as your fueling your pizza oven fire.
What I love about the Pellethead PoBoy is that thanks to that barbeque fan, it reaches peak temps in half the time! Just continue adding small amounts of pellets to the hopper every minute to keep the fire going.
Note: If you have a brand new PoBoy, getting your temperature up really high also doubly cures the oven prior to putting in the food. I definitely recommend curing the oils and the stainless steel a little bit before putting in your pizza, chicken, steak, etc.
Baking the Pizza
Use your digital laser temperature gun to check multiple points on your stone. Depending on the pizza crust you’re baking, you will want the stone to reach a heat of 650 and 850 degrees. The front door is insulated, keeping heat loss while cooking to a minimum. This allows for faster cooking with less fuel required.
Once the stone reaches the right temperature, add your pizza to the PoBoy pizza oven. Before adding your pizza, lay down some flour or cornmeal on your pizza peel to make sliding the pizza in easier. Today, I’ve got a pepperoni pizza all set to go.
Note: This pizza oven gets hot! The ideal temperature for cooking a pizza is 800 degrees and over. The PoBoy pizza oven reaches temperatures of over 900 degrees. As a result, ensure you keep children, pets, and combustibles away from the PoBoy! While your pizza bakes, I recommend pulling the pizza out and rotating it every 30 seconds for the best results. While the PoBoy is the perfect oven for pizza, you can also bake chicken, steak, veggies, and more. Your pizza is going to cook fast!
About 90 seconds later, and the pizza is done! I rotated it about 3 times every 30 seconds and that got the results I was looking for. The result: a delicious Neapolitan style pepperoni pizza. We’ve got nice charring and curling on the outside of the pepperonis. This is what’s nice about the PoBoy is that you can get the pizza exactly how you like it. The underside is beautifully done and crispy too. Excellent wood fire flavor.
If you want to do a steak, chicken, veggies, or more, simply use a cast iron pan with olive oil. After the pepperoni pizza, I put in a 1-inch New York strip of steak in for about 4-4 1/2 minutes on about an 850 degree stone, which resulted in a medium/medium-rare steak.
I am getting a lot of charring on the outside, and it is not really cooked on the inside. I mean it’s cooked, just not how I think it should be. Just want to know if maybe I am not getting it hot enough? Have been cooking at about 675-700 degrees. Maybe hotter? Also, how does raising and lowering the chimney height affect the cooking and airflow? Lowering does x, and raising does y, would help.
Thanks for the message Jeffrey. Happy to Help. Much of the temperature depends on the dough being used, however generally speaking 700-850 is where we like the stone to be temperature wise. For Neapolitan dough I generally have the stone at 650 or so for best results. As we raise the chimney it creates additional draft, lowering creates less natural draft. Generally raising the chimney and having additional draft tends to give us a better flame airflow over the top of the oven. Some folks find variances when operating at different altitudes. Feel free to play with that a bit an make notes on the differences. I like to have mine up a bit personally. Here’s a Poboy tips and tricks video we have on our YouTube you can check out https://youtu.be/zIffi0xaofo. Keep us posted, happy to help!
Just received one today for my birthday! I am a Sous Chef and can’t wait to use this! I had read many reviews about this vs the Ooni one n what I’ve heard is this one is top! It’s the only one that comes with all these accessories to help create your amazing meal of choice! Will post again once I’ve used it! Being from Italy I have an amazing dough recipe so super excited
That’s awesome Jess! What a great Birthday gift! Yes, please keep us posted as you start to use the PoBoy. Here is another video for general tips and tricks. https://youtu.be/zIffi0xaofo
Thanks again!