ZiiPa Piana Review: Nine Pizzas In, Here's What We Learned

We took the ZiiPa Piana round to a family member's house on a Saturday afternoon and cooked nine pizzas on it, back to back. One of us was stretching and topping, the other was on the oven. It went well: everyone got fed, the bases came out crisp, and we were already talking about doing it again before the last one came off the stone.

What follows is the honest version of that afternoon. What the Piana does brilliantly, the couple of habits we picked up along the way, and the kit that turned out to matter more than we expected. The spec, for anyone who wants it up front, is a rotating cordierite stone driven by a dial on the outside of the oven, 400°C in around twenty minutes, 10kg, £299.95.

The Rotating Stone: Does It Make a Difference?

Yes, and more than we expected it to. In most compact ovens the side of the pizza facing the flame cooks faster than the side away from it, so you open the door and turn the pizza with a peel, and every time you do that you lose heat. The Piana takes that away. You turn a dial on the outside and the stone moves under the pizza while the door stays shut.

The rhythm that worked for us was this. Launch the pizza, leave it alone for about thirty seconds, then turn the dial a full 180° and give it a similar spell on the other side. Those two half-turns get the whole pizza cooking evenly. After that it becomes a matter of judgement, turning the dial in smaller increments to bring on whichever part of the crust is lagging behind the rest, until it looks right. Do not expect to be pulling it out after a minute, ours took a fair bit longer than that, and the pleasure of it is that all the finishing work happens through the dial rather than the door.

The stone itself is 31cm cordierite, 0.8cm thick. Cordierite pulls moisture out of the dough as it cooks, which is what gives a Neapolitan base its dry, crisp underside rather than the softer, slightly steamed result you get off thin steel. It holds heat well and recovers fast between pizzas as long as you keep the fuel going in.

The door is solid, so you check on a pizza by opening it for a moment rather than watching through glass. We opened ours far less than we expected to, because the dial does the work you would normally be doing with a peel, and when we did want a look, pulling the door back a fraction was enough to see how far the stone had spun.

One small thing worth knowing: the stone can feel stiff to lift out when the oven is cold. That is normal. Once it has been up to temperature and the metal has expanded a little, it comes out cleanly.

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The Door Is Doing More Than You Think

Cook with the door on and shut, and the Piana holds its heat beautifully. That is the single biggest thing we learnt about getting a good result out of it. The stone underneath will stay hot whatever you do, so if the door is off, the air temperature drops away and you get a base that is cooked through sitting under a top that has not caught up. Keep it shut and the two finish together, which is exactly what you want.

The other reason to keep it on is safety, and ZiiPa flag this in the manual too. With the door open, the airflow through the oven can push flames out of the back. It is expected behaviour rather than a fault, but it is worth knowing before it happens: keep the door on while the flames are at their biggest, and do not add pellets with the door off. We ended the day with a bit of soot up the back that wanted cleaning, which is a fair reminder to leave the door where it belongs.

Fuel: What Nine Pizzas Actually Cost Us

The Piana runs on food-grade wood pellets. The fuel drawer is compact, so pellets are the sensible choice rather than kindling or broken briquettes, and it is worth avoiding pellets with binders or additives because they affect the flavour and leave more residue on the stone.

Across nine pizzas we got through somewhere in the region of two to three kilos. We did not weigh it, that is an honest visual estimate from what was left in the box, so treat it as a rough guide. What it tells you in practical terms is that a 5kg box of ZiiPa beech pellets will comfortably cover an afternoon like ours with plenty spare, and you should budget roughly a box for every fifteen to twenty pizzas. That is cheap fuel for a garden full of people. ZiiPa's own pellets come from sustainably managed French forests, are certified food-grade with no binders, and the 5kg box has a dispenser spout built into it.

We were topping up after almost every pizza, which sounds like more work than it is. The hatch on the top loads without opening the door or breaking the cook, so it becomes part of the rhythm rather than an interruption. What it does mean is that you want your refilling sorted before you light it rather than working it out mid-session.

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Two Minutes of Setup Worth Doing

Here is the tip we would pass on to anyone lighting a Piana for the first time, and it costs you almost nothing.

When you load the fuel drawer, pour the pellets in rather than tipping them, check the separator inside is sitting flat, and make sure the drawer slides all the way home. Then, before you light anything, turn the dial and watch the stone go all the way round.

We can tell you exactly why. We rushed the drawer, a couple of pellets found their way into the chamber and dropped underneath the stone, and the first we knew about it was when the oven was already up to temperature and the stone would not budge. Lifting a very hot pizza stone out with the nearest oven glove is an experience we can recommend skipping. Five seconds with the dial while everything is cold and none of that happens.

The same check is worth doing after the oven has been in a car, because the turning tray underneath the stone sits a bit like the ring under a microwave plate and a knock can shift it out of position. And if something does work its way under the stone mid-session, the fix is easy: turn the dial the other way and it almost always frees itself and carries on, no tools and no drama.

And the Pizza Itself

Which is, after all, the only thing that really matters. The bases came out with a properly puffed rim and some char on it, dry and crisp underneath from the cordierite rather than going soft in the middle by the time it reached the table. The sauce was San Marzano tomatoes crushed by hand and nothing else, which is all they need at these temperatures.

The best of them came somewhere around the middle of the session, once we had the feel of the dial and had stopped second-guessing when to pull them out. Here is one.

The Accessories That Earned Their Place

We went in assuming most of the range was optional. Two of them turned out to be close to essential, one earned its keep all afternoon, and one we would put in the boot first next time.

Donato and Melfa: buy them with the oven

The Donato pellet dispenser mounts on the rear hatch and feeds the oven from a reservoir, so your hands stay well away from the flames while you top up. Given how often we were refilling, that made the whole session more relaxed. Pair it with the Melfa pellet shovel for filling the Donato and you have a proper system: scoop, pour, carry on cooking. These two are the difference between managing the fire and barely thinking about it.

We used an oven glove on one hand while refilling. The handles are not metal so you would probably manage without, but the oven is warm and we would rather err on the side of caution.

Aquila: the launch is the hard part

The Aquila perforated peel was faultless all afternoon, both loading and retrieving. Nine launches, nine clean landings. The perforations cut the friction between the blade and the dough, which is where most sticking happens.

Two habits made the difference for us. Dust the peel with semolina before the pizza goes on it, because the coarse grains act like tiny ball bearings under the base. Then give the peel a small shake and check the pizza slides before you go anywhere near the oven. If it moves, you are away.

Ranella: the one we would pack first next time

We split a garlic bread by accident, and cheese and butter went straight onto the stone. By the last few pizzas there was enough baked-on residue that it was catching on the bases going in, and clearing it meant running the oven on for another five or ten minutes. A Ranella stone brush clears that in seconds between pizzas and keeps the stone clean all session. We did not have one with us, and it is the first thing we would add to the box.

Aquino: a clever little thing

The Aquino cutter is a nice piece of design for £7.95, built like a knife with a stainless wheel at the tip and a serrated edge behind it. You score with the wheel and let the serrations finish anything it does not go straight through. On thin pepperoni, ham and vegetables it was excellent, and it slices a pizza faster than a standard wheel because you are not repositioning between cuts.

If your toppings run to thick-cut salami, a larger wheel gives you more leverage to push straight down through it. The Cerutti Inox 10.5cm wheel is the one we would pair with it, and there are scissors and rockers in the pizza wheels, scissors and cutters collection if you prefer either of those.

Which Kit Should You Buy?

We would happily recommend the Piana to anyone. What we would not do is recommend buying it on its own and sorting the rest out later, because the pellet handling and the stone cleaning are the two things that make the difference between a relaxed afternoon and a fiddly one, and both of those live in the accessories. The bundles work out cheaper than buying the same pieces separately, so there is no reason to do it the hard way.

The Pizza Night Kit at £469.95 is the one we would point most people at, and it is very close to what we actually had with us on the day. It adds the pellet dispenser, the topping station, dough boxes and a cutter to the oven and essentials, which covers the whole job from proving the dough to slicing the last pizza. If you are buying the Piana because you want to feed people with it, this is the convenient answer and it saves you £80.40.

The Ultimate Kit at £669.95 is the one we would buy for ourselves. It is the Pizza Night Kit plus the Vallone trolley and the stone brush, which are precisely the two things we found ourselves wanting: somewhere solid to stand the oven and put the peel down, and a brush to clear the stone between pizzas. Between them, that is genuinely everything you need to run the oven properly, with nothing left to work out on the day.

The Starter Kit at £369.95 is for anyone who just wants to get going. Oven, travel bag, pellets, scoop, peel, and the flour, semola and San Marzano tomatoes to make your first doughs and sauce, so you can cook the day it arrives without a second shopping list. The dispenser and the brush can follow later once you know how often you will use it.

Everything We Used on the Day

The one thing missing from that list, and the one we would add before doing it again, is the Ranella stone brush.

Getting It There and Getting It Home

The Piana is 10kg with legs that fold, so it is properly portable rather than portable on paper. It went in the boot in the Fontana bag with the chimney off and came home the same way, and setup and pack-down each took under a minute. Being able to take a proper pizza oven to someone else's house is a large part of the fun of this one.

Give it a couple of hours after the last pizza and it is cool enough to bag up, so plan on coffee, pudding and the washing up before you load the car. Nobody minded.

At home it is a different proposition. The Vallone trolley gives it a fixed base at a sensible working height, which took the wobble out of the whole operation and gave us somewhere to put the peel down. The Sacco cover is the one for leaving it set up outside between sessions.

Two Pairs of Hands

One person can run the whole thing comfortably enough. We just found it easier split: one on the prep table stretching and topping, one on the oven with the door, dial, peel and pellets. It takes the pressure off both jobs, and it meant nobody was trying to top a pizza and watch the stone at the same time.

It did not stay that neat for long, and that was the best part of the afternoon. People kept drifting over wanting a go at stretching their own, so the prep table changed hands all day and everyone ended up with a pizza they had built themselves.

Who Is the Piana For?

The Piana suits someone who wants Neapolitan-style pizza at home and enjoys the business of cooking over a live fire. It needs twenty minutes to heat, it needs feeding, and it wants your attention while a pizza is in. That is what this method asks for, and the results are the reason people keep asking for it.

The rotating stone is the reason to choose it over most compact ovens near the price. Nothing else in this size bracket removes the mid-cook peel work the same way, and after an afternoon of turning a dial instead of chasing a pizza round with a peel, we are not in a hurry to go back. If you would rather switch something on and forget about it, a gas oven asks less of you and there is no shame in that.

It is worth being upfront about the two real trade-offs too. The Piana tops out at 400°C, lower than some gas and multi-fuel ovens that reach 500°C, and it runs on wood pellets only, so if you want the option to switch between wood, charcoal and gas, this is not that oven. Neither stopped us getting a proper Neapolitan bake in under 90 seconds, but they are the honest reasons someone might choose differently.

It is also worth saying that this is a nice-looking object, which matters when it lives in a garden rather than a kitchen cupboard. There are three colourways: Charcoal, Eucalyptus and Chalk. Eucalyptus is the one people gravitate to, a soft sage green that looks considerably better outdoors than the usual matte black. Several of the accessories come in the same three colours, including the Vallone trolley, the Fontana bag, the Melfa shovel and the Spetina dough boxes, so the whole setup matches rather than looking assembled from spare parts. The bundles let you pick your colour across the oven and the matching pieces in one go.

Verdict

We had a very good afternoon with the Piana. Nine pizzas, everyone fed, and the sort of session where people hang around the oven instead of drifting off. The rotating stone is a real feature rather than a spec-sheet line, the top-loading hatch means a long session stays a session, and the whole thing packed down and travelled without complaint at either end.

What we would tell anyone buying one: check the stone spins before you light it, keep the door on, dust that peel with semolina, and get the accessories in the same order as the oven rather than a month later. The Pizza Night Kit is the convenient way to do that, and the Ultimate Kit is the one we would buy ourselves, having spent an afternoon finding out exactly what we were missing.

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