Ooni is best known for making some of the best pizza ovens, but in a shock twist from the iconic outdoor cooking brand, Ooni announced the release of its first stand mixer back in January. And since then, I've been dying to try it.
Available to buy from today, the Ooni Halo Pro Spiral is $799 / £699 at Ooni.com. That's a lot of money, but no more so than other stand mixers designed for bread, from the likes of KitchenAid or Ankarsrum.
I got my first pizza oven back in 2020, but if there's one thing that's really leveled-up my homemade pies, it's making dough from scratch. But a great pizza dough can be tough to make, especially in bulk.
The majority of home stand mixers simply aren't powerful enough to knead enough bread dough for a pizza party, so I was intrigued to see if the Ooni Halo Pro Spiral was up to the task.
According to Ooni, the Halo Pro adopts a spiral mixing technique which it claims has historically "only been found in professional kitchens, bakeries and pizzerias."
Better yet, the mixer has a massive 7.2-quart bowl that fits enough dough for 20 pizzas, or six loaves of bread.
I've yet to fire up my Ooni Volt and invite my friends over for a pizza party, but in the meantime, I took my new mixer for a spin on the weekend, making a loaf of sandwich bed and a lemon cake. Here are my first impressions.
Setting up
My first impression of this mixer is just how heavy it is. Even my courier warned me as I accepted the delivery that this is a hefty item. And while it would mean that it's tricky to lift this mixer on and off of kitchen counters, it's also a great thing for durability.
Some of the lighter mixers I've tried move around on the countertop when kneading bread dough, whereas the Halo Pro didn't budge the entire time I tested it.
The attachments are weighty, too. They're all metal, which makes them easier to keep clean, and the flat beater has a silicone flex edge that prevents ingredients from sticking to the bottom and side of the mixing bowl.
You raise the tilt head up and down using two hinges. This means you'll need to lift your mixer head using both hands, but again, it keeps the head very secure and prevents it from moving around during kneading.
It's brilliant at bread
There's no denying it, this machine makes a mean loaf of bread. The first thing I made was a simple loaf of white sandwich bread, using a basic online recipe.
Ooni does have an app that will, I'm sure, offer plenty of dough recipes to try in your Halo Pro mixer, but they'd not been added when I tested it as it was ahead of the launch day.
The dial on the top of the machine allows you to customize a timer, and will also allow you to crank up the speed in percentage increases of 5. I set it at 50% for 10 minutes, pouring my water in slowly to allow the mix to incorporate.
By the end of the 10 minutes, my dough was the perfect consistency. Ooni claims that the Halo Pro mixer develops a stronger gluten network than most mixers thanks to its spiral mixing tech which works the dough around a central bar, and it worked an absolute treat.
My finished loaf came out evenly risen and with a springy texture that was perfect for sandwiches.
I've made this basic recipe countless times, and this is without question the most it's ever risen, which suggests Ooni's onto something if you plan on using this mixer for bread or pizza dough.
And the cake's not bad, either
It's easier to mix a cake batter than knead a loaf of bread, but you'd want any good mixer to be able to do both.
I threw together another go-to cake recipe that I've made contless times; a lemon loaf cake. This all-in-one recipe is on the small side, so I was curious to see if the wide and deep 7.2-quart bowl could do a good job of incorporating all the ingredients, or whether they'd get stuck up the side of the bowl like I've had with stand mixers I've tried in the past.
I cranked the mixer up to 100% and left it for a few minutes, and I was super impressed with the results. The batter came out smooth and the flex edge to my flat beater meant that the mix barely stuck to the sides of the bowl.
I do think this mixer would work better with a large cake recipe, and I also question just how much air it was able to incorporate into my mixture when it lay so low in the bowl.
My finished cake tasted and looked delicious, but the texture was a little dense compared to how it usually comes out. This could be because I turned the speed up too high, knocking out the air from the batter, but it could also be because its generous bowl size is not best suited to smaller cake recipes.
My first impressions
I've yet to put this mixer to the full test. I'm looking forward to making more cake, whisking eggs and heavy cream with the whisk attachment, and kneading a lot more bread dough once I get access to Ooni's full list of recipes.
Is it a good stand mixer? I'm already confident in saying that it's good, maybe even one of the best stand mixers. But I'll have to take it for a spin at at least a few pizza parties before I write my full review.
But if you've been on the waitlist and wondering if this is the perfect mixer for you, it gets my provisional seal of approval. Especially if you're a bread-lover who's spent years cultivating your sourdough starter, I think the spiral technology could be a total game-changer for making better bread in larger volumes. I noticed a huge difference in the bake and texture of my bread loaf, and the Halo Pro made it look oh so easy.
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