In this Grilla Pie-Ro review we're asking the question: Can a grill company make a pizza oven that can rival the leading pizza ovens on the market? Let's find out.
Disclaimer
This is not sponsored content. Grilla sent us this pizza oven to test, without any promises or agreements to make favorable content. We're just showing you our experience with this new oven, so if that's for you, let's dive in.
Grilla Pie-Ro Pellet Powered Pizza Oven
The Pie-Ro is the first pellet-fueled pizza oven of its kind. For starters, the Pie-Ro has a 10 pound pellet hopper. We've tested other pellet pizza ovens in the past and have honestly been disappointed with most since the pellet capacity has been so small, needing constant refilling.
In contrast, the 10 pound hopper of this Grilla pizza oven can maintain a high temperature of 800° for about 3 hours without needing any pellet intervention.
Additionally, the Pie-Ro uses the same pellet grill technology we find in the Grilla Silverbac, Mammoth, and Chimp pellet grills. In fact, it even connects to an app on your phone, although we haven't really found much need for that, personally.
The digital controller allows you to dial in your exact desired temperature in 5° increments from 180-500, and then 100° jumps up to a maximum temperature of 800°.
Rotating Stone
The Pie-Ro's name plays homage to the oven's self-rotating pizza stone. With a simple press of a button on the controller, one can start and stop the rotating feature of the 16" pizza stone.
The stone can easily be pulled out when it's time to clean your oven.
Quick Tip!
The best way to clean your pizza stone is to allow the mess to bake off at a high heat and then scrape it off using a scraping tool. Do not attempt to clean your pizza stone with soap and water.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Every wood-fired pizza oven produces a lot of ash, and pellet-fueled ovens are no exception. Fortunately Grilla has created the Pie-Ro with a clamshell design to make clean-up a breeze.
Simply unlatch the lid and flip it wide open to gain full access to the burn pot and everywhere ash has accumulated. We just used a Shop-Vac to make quick work of our clean up following a 3 hour pizza party with friends.
Because this is a wood-fired oven, the glass on the door will get dirty after a while. We recommend cleaning it between every use. We found that soot cleaned off easily with a wet cloth. After one messy incident resulted in dripped pizza sauce baking onto the glass, we were able to scrape it clean using a flat razor blade (after the oven was fully cooled down).
Because of the electrical components as well as the pellet hopper, I would highly recommend purchasing the cover with your Pie-Ro to protect it from the elements in between uses.
Grilla Pie-Ro FAQs
There are common questions we hear every time we review a pizza oven, so we'll take a minute to answer those for the Pie-Ro now.
How long does it take for the Pie-Ro to preheat?
Time to preheat depends on the temperature you're trying to reach. To reach the maximum temperature of 800° you'll need about 15 minutes, though giving the stone a little extra time to really heat up will help the bottom of your crust cook more thoroughly. Having a good infrared thermometer will help you know when your stone temperature is ready to launch your first pizza.
How fast does a pizza cook in the Grilla Pie-Ro?
Time to cook a pizza depends on the style of pizza being cooked. Neapolitan pizzas cook the fastest, taking about 2 minutes total at 800°F.
How long does the stone temperature take to recover between pizzas?
When cooking Neapolitan pizzas at 800°F, the Grilla Pie Ro took exactly 2 minutes to heat back up to the starting temperature after pulling out a finished pizza. I don't know about you, but that's pretty much how long it takes us to get the next dough ball stretched and topped, so this was a perfectly acceptable recovery time in our opinion.
How long does a full hopper last on the Grilla Pie-Ro?
The Pie-Ro has a 10 pound pellet hopper that will run the pizza oven at full temperature (800°) for about 3 hours. In our experience, when the Pie-Ro was showing signs of needing more fuel (at around the 3 hour mark), there were actually still pellets in the hopper but they had created a dam preventing them from falling down to the auger.
How well does it cook the bottom of the crust?
There are a lot of factors that play into crust doneness, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a couple pictures of pizza crust bottoms. The first picture was the bottom of our very first pizza on the Pie-Ro. Perhaps the stone hadn't fully warmed up yet at that point.
The second picture is a little later in the evening after the pizza oven had been going for a couple of hours. And that pizza appears to have spent a little longer in the oven than the first one.
Grilla Pie-Ro Review
What we liked:
What we didn't like:
The Grilla Pie-Ro has changed the game for all pellet-fueled pizza ovens to follow. Cooking pizzas at 800° for several hours without having to add fuel was certainly a breakthrough. Both veteran and novice pizza makers alike will love the rotating stone and ease of use of this pizza oven.
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