10 Must-have Outdoor Toys

July 08, 2011
The Street

The Artisan Fire Pizza Oven

The funniest part about this is that Kalamazoo Gourmet already had a perfectly functional outdoor pizza oven in its stable. The Outdoor Artisan Pizza Oven had a composite stone cooking surface, a domed exterior for reflecting heat, a 200- to 800-degree cooking range and a wood box for giving pizza that smoky wood-oven flavor.

What it didn't have was a badass wall of hellfire to scare the life out of the neighbors. The $6,500 Artisan Fire Pizza Oven has nearly everything its predecessor had and adds exposed flame and dual burners: one from below to cook the crust and one up top to brown the toppings.

The minimum temperature's been ratcheted up to 350 degrees to keep it running extra hot and to help cut finishing times down to three minutes in some cases. The cooking surface is still stone, but the roof is now lined with stone as well just to give pepperoni the tan it's always longed for. These changes seem really superficial at first but, admittedly, it looks really cool as a result. It's a significant investment, but it'll permanently knock the local pizza place off speed dial.