Aldi tabletop pizza oven

So as not to derail the Solt thread I figured I'd start a thread for the Coolabah tabletop pizza oven from Aldi.

Saw it on clearance for $169 and figured I'd give it a crack at that price.

After getting a new gas bottle to fit the new connector was able to fire it up today... good news is.... it gets hotter than the sun... bad news... my pizza got stuck to the peel and failed to launch. Ended up all bunched up like a bread roll... so crispy topping and a raw centre

Only used a cheap pre-made doughball from Woolworths. Now i know it works I'll make up some dough tonight and give it a try again tomorrow.

First impressions are the turntable actually works alright. It's also a 13-inch stone but only a 10-inch peel so may need to invest in a new peel if I end up liking it.

Pics of the purchase and the failure below 🤣

Second night attempt but using homemade dough this time and it went much better. No issues launching this time. Also use a bit of semolina on the peel.

200 gram dough balls seem to be just the right size for the included peel. Did a quick overnight ferment in the fridge and then shaped into balls and let them rest out of the fridge for about four hours today.

Yeast was past its best before but still had enough life left in it.

Let the oven pre-heat for about 20 odd minutes on full blast while I prepped the toppings.

Turned it down to minimum when launching. After launching pizza only took about 90 - 120 seconds to cook.

The manual turntable works really well. Doesn't go full 360 though so does require one manual turn at the very end but by then it's basically cooked so very easy to doFor my first proper attempt I'm pretty happy with the results after the store bought dough knocked my confidence yesterday So I guess my advice is, don't rush it. Make your own dough.

Looking forward to playing around with it more in the coming weeks and learning its quirks but for $169 I'm pretty stoked with my purchase. My local Aldi is still charging $169 but if you see it for $149 like gbranca117 don't even think about it, just buy it

Quote from gbranca117

Are you moving the pizza at all during the cook or does the turntable manage enough??

Only at the very end, and it's probably not necessary. There is one part that doesn't face the flame directly so comes out slightly blonder. I like to give it a little rotation at the end to put a bit of colour on it, but the turntable means you don't have to touch the pizza until the very end of the cook if you want to get that last little bit of colour in the final seconds of the cook.

Quote from gbranca117

I also found a more expensive unit that has caught my eye (I really need to stop haha) which is similar to the Aldi unit but motorised. But of a halfway point between the Aldi unit and the gozney dome. I think it's called the everdure kiln.

They must be going hard on the advertising because these have been showing up in my social feeds and on the Qantas store 😂

They have a 16-inch stone so can do a decent size pizza. The appeal of the dome to me though is the ability to bake as well.

Quote from gbranca117

with the hot weather creeping in, does anyone do their dough differently??? I'm curious as lately I've been doing my dough rests at room temp and using less dry yeast but with the hot weather I may have to go back to cold fermentation.

I cold ferment for a few days and then shape and rest a room temp for at least four hours.

I found this calculator pretty useful too for working out batch sizes.

Pizza calculator - Stadler Made

Make your own custom recipe with the pizza calculator.

www.stadlermade.com

Quote from gbranca117

That's a great little tool that calculator. Will definitely try it on my next batch in the coming days. I've decided to gift my Aldi oven to my dad for Xmas which means I'll have 2x locations for pizza making haha but won't get to test it out until late December. Hopefully will have more to report once I get to start playing with it.

Brilliant gift idea.

Had another play with mine on the weekend (no photos though). Learned that you have to be distraction free when cooking these types of pizzas, had one flare up with the pizza catching fire. The rotating table meant I was able to quickly pull the arm and have the pizza swing around to me and be quickly put out, so was easy to deal with.

My eldest is four and keeps asking if we can have pizza nearly every night now.

Will likely give it a break this weekend but can see pizza nights becoming a regular feature at least once a month (potentially bi-weekly ) as it's so easy with this thing. Just spend 15 minutes mid-week making the dough and whacking it in the fridge then making sure to get it out after lunch and shaped so it's ready for dinner. Might even have to start buying the big sacks of '00' flour from Costco

Quote from gbranca117

Just stopped into Aldi and spotted this.... In case it wasn't cheap enough haha. If anyone is even slightly interested I would urge you to act quickly..

I stopped by Aldi after seeing this just to check and they still had one on the shelf, but were still asking for $169.

I'm happy with what I paid, but at $99 it's a steal!

Quote from rotatingpizzaman

We have one and it’s great, I made a mod to have the pizza base rotate infinitely, so no manual turning, I connected it to a rotisserie motor for a spit. Work amazing, I have the same concept for my wood fire table top pizza oven.

That's brilliant! That's my only real complaint about the turntable is that it's not fully 360 degrees, it's not a big deal to turn it a little extra manually at the end, but your solution is great!

Quote from Narm Naleg

Could these work with plumbed gas or only bottled?

Out of the box there's only the option to run from bottled gas.

Quote from gbranca117

Wow that's interesting, maybe the sales are store dependent then, I figured all the Aldi stores would of had them at 99.00

Yeah, markdowns are typically decided by the manager and their need to clear room for more stock I think.

I was surprised it hadn't dropped further to be honest.