Kmart Australia pizza oven: I tested the popular kitchen gadget to see if it’s worth buying – so does it live up to the hype? Here’s my brutally honest review

It’s one of Kmart Australia’s new kitchen gadgets that has fans talking, but is the $69 pizza oven really worth your money?

As an avid cook, I enjoy making my own pizzas. Luckily, I’ve used high-end ovens from popular brands like Gozney and Ooni, so I have experience making pizzas at home that taste just as good as they do at the restaurants.

Over the years, Kmart has won the loyalty of thousands of frugal shoppers by offering affordable alternatives to luxury brands. It’s like customers hit the jackpot when they find the perfect ‘dupe’ of a popular brand they can’t afford.

So when Kmart launched its own pizza maker at an affordable price, it piqued my interest.

Shoppers are raving about the kitchen gadget on social media, with some claiming it’s a ‘must-have’ for your next dinner party.

At less than $70, it is undoubtedly one of the cheapest models on the market.

I was curious to see if it lived up to expectations.

But if you’ve been eyeing a pizza oven without spending a lot of money, you might want to reconsider your purchase after reading my review.

This is how you make the perfect pizza dough

INGREDIENTS

4 cups plain flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2.5 teaspoons of salt

4 teaspoons white sugar

4 tablespoons of olive oil

330 ml warm tap water

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix the dry ingredients and make a well in the center. Pour in oil and water and mix until combined.

Dust the surface with additional flour and knead the dough with your hands for 5-10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. If using a stand mixer, mix for 3-5 minutes.

Roll it into a ball and place it in the same bowl, drizzle with olive oil and then turn it over. Cover with cling film and set aside, let rest for 2 hours or until doubled in size.

Sprinkle the surface with flour and divide the dough into 3-4 small balls. Place them on a large tray or plate, cover with a tea towel and let rest for 1 hour until doubled in size.

When ready to cook, rough out the dough into a round shape, then add your favorite toppings and bake.

To give you an idea of ​​my cooking style, I love making pizza at home. I always make my own dough and slow-braised New York-style pizza sauce. It is actually a permanent dish on our menu.

My favorite pizza toppings are a classic margherita, supreme, pepperoni, vegetarian, ham and pineapple, and BBQ chicken.

From what I’ve learned: less is more. A good pizza only needs a few toppings, so make sure you don’t overload the base with ingredients. I find this makes the pizza soggy, making it harder to turn and taking longer to cook.

My local Kmart store was even sold out, so I ended up ordering one online. It didn’t take long for it to arrive at my house.

Considering the extremely low price, I was quite impressed to see that the box came with everything you need – including the pizza peel (a paddle for lifting it out of the oven), a built-in timer and a small window so you can can see how your pizza is cooking.

When I took the oven out of the box, I noticed how light it was. It weighs just over 4kg – not nearly as heavy as the Gozney Roccbox, which weighs less than 20kg.

My first problem was finding a heat-resistant surface on which to use the oven. According to the manual, the appliance should not be used outdoors and should be kept away from surfaces that are sensitive to heat, including laminated or vinyl kitchen worktops and wooden tables. That basically eliminated every surface in my house.

I decided to give the budget pizza maker a try to see if it lived up to expectations. That didn’t happen

I ended up placing the pizza maker on my stovetop, but please don’t try this at home. For testing purposes, this was the only ‘safe’ spot available – and I wasn’t willing to risk my kitchen worktop.

The oven took longer to heat up than the 15 minutes recommended in the manual.

One thing to note is that it doesn’t reach the same scorching temperatures as its more expensive counterparts. Kmart can only go up to 300C, while the more expensive versions can go up to 400C.

Since it took way too long for the oven to reach the highest temperature, we ended up baking the pizzas at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, which took about 20 to 25 minutes to heat up.

It’s also worth noting that Kmart’s oven is electric, meaning it doesn’t use a fire – compared to the expensive models.

We had a pizza dinner with family this weekend, so we made extra dough to test out the Kmart gadget.

While the oven was heating up, I started rolling out my dough and adding my toppings. Since I wanted to keep the toppings simple, I chose pepperoni.

It only takes 60 to 90 seconds to prepare the perfect pizza in an Ooni or Gozney. However, Kmart’s pizza maker took almost 15 minutes to bake, despite the manual suggesting a cooking time of four to five minutes

Transferring the pizza from the countertop to the ceramic stone using the peeler was surprisingly easy. The secret is to cover the base with semolina. These little magic granules make your pizza slide seamlessly onto the stone – and they have honestly changed my life and taken homemade pizza to a whole new level.

Once the pizza is on the stone, close the lid and wait for the dough to do its work.

To put things into perspective, it only takes 60 to 90 seconds to cook the perfect pizza in an Ooni or Gozney.

The pizzas I made in the expensive ovens turned out perfectly: you can expect a crispy crust with leopard spots, a smoky flavor and delicious melted cheese.

According to Kmart’s manual, most pizzas should bake in about four to five minutes. Despite only having three ingredients on our base – pizza sauce, salami and cheese – our pizza looked quite pale when we opened the lid after five minutes. It ended up taking almost 15 minutes to cook to our liking. We weren’t impressed by this as we were used to getting our pizzas in less than two minutes.

Halfway through the cooking process, we lifted the lid to check our pizza – and noticed it wasn’t evenly cooked, so we used the peel to pull the pizza out, turn it, and replace it before closing the pizza. lid.

You’re better off saving your money and cooking the pizza in your standard kitchen oven

After the first pizza was done, we put the second one in the oven to bake. We sat down to taste the first batch.

My first impressions of the pizza were that the crust wasn’t puffy, the texture was quite hard, and the cheese wasn’t gooey or bubbly as you might expect.

Unfortunately, the oven fell flat in terms of performance. Despite following the instructions and preheating as directed, the pizzas were less than satisfying. You’re better off saving your money and cooking the pizza in your standard kitchen oven.

Would I recommend buying it? Unfortunately, no.

While I appreciate Kmart for offering a budget-friendly option in today’s rising cost of living, I think it’s worth investing in one from a reputable pizza oven brand if you’re serious about making pizza at home.

But if you’re not ready to spend money on a high-end pizza oven, the Kmart model is a good starter kit for beginners who want to make their own pizzas at home.

However, it did not meet my expectations and did not deliver the quality I had hoped for.