I saw the Gozney Dome when it was first released and thought it looked amazing, a really stylish looking sleek design which really stood out.
As a result of doing the cook school at The Shack MK, Rob and Dan kindly let me bring their demo unit home to play with for a few weeks to really test it out.
The version I got to play with had the dual fuel functionality meaning it's capable of using both wood and gas to heat so meant I could choose how we wanted to cook.
I will say, the stand that comes with the dome is a fantastic bit of kit but it wouldn't quite fit in my car after a bbq class so I made up a base with a large piece of oak and a trestle that would take the 58kg weight of the dome so the official one looks a lot smarter than what im using.
First Impressions
I fired up the oven using the gas first, it took a little while for the gas to flow enough to ignite but once it was up and running, the oven heated up really quickly and efficiently. I liked the temperature gauge LED screen, it was easy to read in all conditions we used it on and the temperatures effortlessly reached 350-400c. The dial on the right that controls the amount of gas was easy to use and adjust. The dome stays very hot for a very long time after heating it showing it has some excellent thermal properties. It really did look good in the garden too with it's sleek design.
Cooking With The Dome
The first cook we did with the dome wasn't pizza at all, it was a simple steak salad with some Tom Hixson Ex-Dairy Ribeyes.
We used the dome to char and blister some cherry tomatoes on the vine and to char & blister some padron peppers. It did this quickly and effortlessly with the oven sitting at around 400c.
To cook the steaks, we left a cast iron pan in the base of the dome for 5 minutes to really get a high heat into it, we then slapped the steak on to an almighty sizzle. I used the pizza rotator to lift the pan to the roof of the dome for the flames to char the top of the steak. This method worked fantastically, flipping the steak half way through cooking. The meat was about 3/4" thick but we managed to keep it medium rare with a nice char.
The next few cooks were all about the pizza, I think pizza is one of those dishes that looks super simple i.e. sauce and toppings on a dough, but with most things, theres an art to pizza making and loads of different styles to play with. We focussed more on Neapolitan pizza style with a nice puffed crust and thin simple base. Often less is more with pizza not to overload toppings but use good quality ingredients. We invited neighbours round and hosted a party for the jubilee getting kids and adults involved in the pizza making.
We used https://www.stadlermade.com/pizza-calculator/ for the pizza recipes, this is a fantastic tool that let us upscale and work out how much we needed for different cooks and we knocked out 12 pizzas at the jubilee party.
We also experimented with some 12, 24 & 48 hour slow fermentation doughs and you could really taste the difference in flavour. We also experimented with the 00 high protein pizza flour needed for the long fermentation and it worked fantastically.
So after eating our bodyweight in pizza for a few days, we decided to cook a few other dishes as the amount of space in the dome allows for a lot more than pizza.
We decided to cook a whole meal including pudding to show the diversity of the dome, we cooked a couple of cod loins with a garlic, coriander seed, chilli and ginger dressing along with a chicken shwarma coated in Waz BBQ Hut Sweet embers Cherry Cola Sauce https://www.wazbbqhut.co.uk/product/sweet-embers (Spicepunch15 for 15% off). We served these up with cous cous stuffed peppers which charred up beautifully.
The chicken & fish we served up in flat breads with salad, homemade mango salsa, crushed paprika corn and salad.
Pudding was Gozney Dome roast pineapple with burnt brown sugar and ice cream.
Wood vs Gas
The majority of the cooks we did were over gas, this was mainly due to time constraints and to be able to go indoors to finish prepping while the dome heated. The gas did blow out in some gusts of wind which was something we had to adjust by rotating the dome. If we had the Gozney stand, this comes on casters so would have been fairly easy to adjust and change angles. The gas worked really well though with a jet of flame going up and round the top of the dome. We allowed around 20-30 minutes for the dome to heat up each time before cooking to allow the stone base to warm through.
When we had a little more time, we used the fire option, I was expecting this to use a lot of wood with high temperature cooking but I was really surprised how efficient it was. The temperature gauge worked really well and it was very easy to top up the temperatures with a single piece of wood whenever needed, a little piece of wood every 10 minutes was all it needed to maintain 400c . The wood fire adds flavour but will dirty the dome a lot quicker, we needed to give this a really good scrub before handing it back to the guys at the shack.
I was also really impressed with the draw of the smoke, no dirty smoke blowing back into our faces, the dome really channelled the smoke up and out the chimney. You can't really see it with the gas but you can see it clearly with the smoke coming off the wood.
Would I buy one?
In short, yes. We thought it looked really good, it performed extremely well and turned out the best pizza we have ever made ourselves. At £1499 for the dome itself, its an investment but you can genuinely use it for more than 'just' a pizza oven, there is steamer injector accessory for making breads & we specifically cooked up a number of different dishes to try it out.
Another accessory is the door which I would get that allows you to heat the oven, put in some dishes & then seal the unit allowing the food to cook in the residual heat.
We have had some fantastic results on other BBQ's and ovens we own but this really took them to another level, there are also meat thermometers that attach to the temperature gauge so if you are cooking meats to specific temperatures, this will allow you to monitor progress without messing about too much.
Where to buy?
Give Rob and Dan a shout from The Shack MK or BuyABBQ.Com
They stock the dome, stand and all the accessories you might need.
