Haloo Revolve Pizza Oven Review
While it might be slightly smaller than some pizza ovens, the Revolve packs in more features than most.
Verdict
Some pizza ovens are squarely aimed at the pizza aficionado keen to up their game, providing little in the way of guidance and ease of use. The Revolve, however, manages to pull off a neat trick in offering excellent cooking abilities that’ll appeal to experienced pizzaiolos and newbies alike.
Pros
- Revolving pizza stone
- Includes peel, cover, recipe cards and thermometer
- Plenty of guidance for beginners
Cons
- No choice of colours
- Longer to heat up than some
- Maximum pizza size is 12-13 inches
Key Features
- Pizza sizeMakes pizzas up to 13-inches.
- Oven typeThis is a gas powered pizza oven, with a rotating base for even cooking.
Introduction
Haloo only launched into the UK market in 2022, bringing with it outdoor heating, lighting and cooking ranges. The Revolve Pizza Oven was one of its initial launches, featuring a novel rotating pizza stone designed to cut down on charred crusts, manual pizza turning, unevenly cooked bases and general frustration.
This, combined with almost everything you might desire to simplify pizza-making at home, ensures that whether you’re a keen entertainer or a pizza novice, the Revolve could be the outdoor oven you’ll turn to again and again.
Design and features
- Spare stone section included
- Sleek steel and black finish
- Single linear gas burner
First impressions of the Revolve are good: crafted from carbon steel and stainless steel with a smart black finish, it looks and feels sturdy. Three, fold-out legs give it a little extra height compared to some – a must if you’re using it at floor level – while underneath, there’s a motor that turns the pizza stone and is powered by 3 x AA batteries.
Inside, its three pizza stone sections are made from cordierite ceramic: there’s a 13-inch circular one that rotates, flanked by two sections, with a gas burner along the back. A spare section has also been included, should one be damaged. And while the cooking area inside is smaller than some, it appears that Haloo has opted for this size for a good reason. According to its research, most people want to try different flavours of pizza, rather than make large pizzas, plus the rotating stone does away with the need to turn the pizza and the space inside to do so.
One of the big pluses of the Revolve is the amount of kit included. Not only is there a good-sized pizza peel in the box, there’s an infrared thermometer for gauging the temperature inside the oven, which I found to be invaluable.
A set of wipeable recipe cards (far more practical outdoors than a booklet), including one for a dessert pizza, help you get started.
The oven cover is also a big win – weather and UV-resistant, its carry handles mean the Revolve can be moved easily by one person. A final plus is that the stones are effectively ‘self-cleaning’, with a recommendation to burn off debris while in situ at the end of each session, and to swap the front and back stones at the next session if the front one remains grubby. I found this to be fairly effective, but didn’t manage to get them looking like new again.
Performance
- Fast, even pizza cooking
- Stone can carry on rotating slightly when turned off
- Easy to adjust heat and gauge temperature inside
Connecting the Revolve should have been simple but turned out to be tricky: it’s supplied with a push-on bayonet-style regulator, yet the bottle of propane I had was a screw-in side fitting.
This meant I had to buy a compatible regulator before any pizza-making could happen. Once it was connected, everything else went smoothly. It lit on the second attempt – it’s worth noting that the ignition is manual not automatic, so a little trickier.
In general, I found that it was slower to heat up than some: the stones took about 30 minutes rather than the rapid 15 or so that other gas-fired models are capable of. However, having the infrared thermometer on hand ensured that I could assess this as I waited rather than take my chances with a pizza oven that wasn’t hot enough.
Getting the pizza in was straightforward – the peel supplied had a long handle and was easy to use – although the instructions recommend stopping the rotation while you do so. This isn’t instantaneous – often, when I turned the rotation off, the stone carried on turning a little. This was less of an issue when sliding the pizza in, but more of a challenge when it came to fishing it out. I found that turning off the rotation just before I was ready with the pizza peel was the most effective technique.
I used the Revolve to cook several basic cheese and tomato pizzas, with a little semolina on the underside and on the crust. While I could cook these without turning the heat down for rapid results, the most consistency came from lowering the flame while they were in the oven.
This method produced evenly cooked pizza: risen at the edges with hardly any singeing while melting and browning the cheese on top.
Once I felt the cheese and tomato pizzas were as good as they could be, I turned to topping the pizza with meat and vegetables. This benefitted more from turning the heat down when the pizza was in the oven, as cooking solely on high heat tended to burn the crust before the topping was sufficiently browned. Lowered, the salami and mushroom-topped pizzas emerged well-cooked but not burnt, with a nicely risen crust, crispy underside and even some leopard-spotting around the exterior.
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Should you buy it?
You love the idea of making pizza with authentic-looking crusts: Get beautifully risen dough and elusive leopard spotting at home, without the need to pop to the local pizzeria.
You’re truly passionate about cooking pizza regularly on a large scale: The smaller size of the Revolve could limit your horizons.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve found pizza ovens to be often the preserve of those who are willing to invest time and energy in crafting the perfect pizza, plus lots of kit, the Revolve is sure to be a breath of fresh air. It strikes the right balance between offering enough for most seasoned pizza makers and being user-friendly for the novice cook.
Its features are genuinely useful and practical, and it’s rare that I can say that about any product. It’d be nice if the stone stopped turning immediately when the motor was switched off, and I’d like a choice of regulator but they’re minor quibbles.
Otherwise, I feel this is a pizza oven that will suit most people and be a regular guest at gatherings. However, if you want pizza any time, anywhere, and the weather’s looking less than clement, the more flexible indoor-outdoor Ooni Volt 12 might be more appealing. For more space inside, you may want to look at the cheaper Gozney Roccbox with a static stone.
How we test
We test every oven we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main oven for the review period
We use an IR temperature sensor to check the internal temperature.
We measure power usage to see how much the oven costs to run.
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FAQs
This uses three AA batteries to rotate the pizza stone while cooking; heat is provided by gas.
It can make pizzas up to 13-inches.
Full specs
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
