There's a moment every home pizza maker knows: the raw pie is on the peel, the oven is blisteringly hot and it feels like everything could go south in seconds. Getting it in cleanly is one thing. Spinning it around inside 900 degrees F so it cooks evenly is another problem entirely.

Ooni, a leader in the at-home pizza category, has released a rotating stone to help both amateur and experienced at-home pizza makers just in time for summer. I tried it to see whether it offers a notable improvement to my at-home pizza oven routine. Here's everything you need to know about the new Ooni rotating stone and why I'm hooked on the upgrade.

Why rotate? Understanding how a pizza oven works

If you were to compare pizzas made in a traditional pizza oven and one with a revolving pizza stone side by side, you might not notice much of a difference at first -- assuming, of course, you followed the instructions correctly. With traditional pizza ovens, even though the high internal temperatures can cook a pizza in just one or two minutes (depending on how thin you stretched the crust), you're still expected to reach in with the pizza peel and manually rotate the pie every 20 seconds or so. Even then, inconsistencies can happen.

This is necessary because of the way a typical pizza oven works. To appreciate the effectiveness of Ooni's new rotating pizza stone, it's important to understand your pizza oven's atmosphere. Essentially, while heat radiates upward from the preheated pizza stone at the base of the model, convection and radiation are also at work, circulating the superheated air in a vacuum tornado. While this is incredibly effective at cooking pizza in just a minute or two, it also creates hotter and cooler zones inside the oven. That means even a 20-second delay in rotating the pie can leave you with blackened, blistered spots on one side and slightly puffy, undercooked dough on another.

What a rotating pizza stone does for the pizza-making process

With Ooni's new rotating stone, you get the benefit of turning the pizza without having to turn it. All zones cook evenly, even if you don't manage to center the pizza on the stone. Every edge and pocket gets equal time in the hottest zones of the pizza oven.

This is especially handy if you've ever experienced pizza peel frustration. Maneuvering anything in a 700-plus-degree space can be anxiety-producing enough already. Having to do it repeatedly, hoping you don't accidentally shove the pizza against the walls of the pizza oven or over the edge (in models with a gap between the stone and the chamber), can send your internal temperature soaring.

On one hand, it's a relatively minor detail -- pizza ovens cook so quickly that it's hard to call rotating-stone technology a true time saver, especially since you probably shouldn't walk away while a pizza is cooking anyway. On the other hand, it does help deliver maximum consistency, which matters a lot when something cooks this fast.

If you also use your pizza oven to roast foods such as meats, potatoes or vegetables, a rotating stone isn't quite the same as a rotisserie -- it can't flip anything over for you -- but it does eliminate the need to constantly reposition a heavy cast-iron skillet or sizzler while cooking.

In short, anything that reduces how often you need to manually maneuver food inside a device that routinely reaches 800 degrees is a plus.

And not for nothing: If you're cooking solo, it also frees up enough time and attention to actually photograph the pizza while it cooks.

Ooni's Rotating Stone assembly is surprisingly easy

If you already own an Ooni Koda 2 model -- either the Koda 2, Koda 2 Pro or Koda 2 Max -- you're in luck. The rotating stone accessory can be installed in your existing oven and costs between $329 and $399, depending on your specific model. It's also possible to buy the Ooni Rotating Stone as a bundle with one of the Koda 2 oven models, which range in price between $799 and $1,649.

When it comes to installation, even a quick glance at an Ikea-style instruction manual usually gives me hives -- at least until I slow down and actually process what I'm looking at. While the Ooni Koda 2 Pro pizza oven included written instructions alongside the diagrams, the rotating stone booklet relied entirely on graphics. I panicked at first, then quickly realized how simple the setup actually was.

A removable plug on the bottom of any Koda 2 model makes room for the battery-powered module that drives the rotating stone, which mounts into the oven using four existing installation holes and the included screws. The rotating stone itself sits atop a two-piece metal wheel, alongside either two or four additional stone sections that fit around the sides to create a continuous cooking surface inside the pizza oven.

Working Ooni's Rotating Stone: Easy to operate, but too many ways to spin

Admittedly, things do get a little more complicated here. The rotating stone is actually very simple to use, but given multiple settings and various ways to turn it on and off, it's easy to get confused. 

The module for the rotating stone connects to the pizza oven's Digital Temperature Hub, so you can switch it on and off using the base button on the hub. I found this the easiest way to manage the stone, with a single press to switch it either on or off. There is also a button on the base of the rotating stone module that, when long-pressed, turns it on or off entirely (it can also be used as the temperature hub button to begin or end rotation).

A motion sensor on the lower front of the rotating stone module also lets you wave your hand in front of it to turn the rotator on or off. In practice, though, I found the feature both inconsistent and awkward to use, since you have to slide your hand into the narrow space between the temperature hub and the rotating module to trigger it.

Presumably, the placement is meant to prevent the sensor from activating whenever something passes in front of the oven. Still, I can't really imagine a scenario where your hands are free enough to wave underneath the oven, but not free enough to simply press the button on the temperature hub, which is much easier to reach.

Another confusing aspect of the rotating stone is that it also includes a preheat mode -- intended either for warming the oven or for "rotisserie-style" cooking beyond pizza -- where the stone rotates 90 degrees every five minutes. That setting can only be activated with a double press on either the digital temperature hub or the rotating stone module itself, while a triple press turns the motion sensor on or off.

There's a small indicator light on the motion sensor to show which mode is active, but it's not easy to see when you're standing in front of the oven because the sensor sits tucked behind the temperature hub. As a result, it's easy to think you're in one mode -- or that you've turned the rotator off entirely -- only to be surprised when the stone suddenly starts moving on its own.

On several occasions, after turning off the gas and walking away from the pizza oven, I came back to find the stone still rotating on its own, presumably because I'd accidentally left it in preheat/rotisserie mode or unintentionally triggered the motion sensor. Because the motor runs on batteries, you do need to stay mindful about making sure it's actually powered off when you're done cooking. Otherwise, you may end up factoring a steady supply of AA batteries into the overall cost of owning the rotating stone.

Ooni Rotating Stone results

That said, there's a noticeable difference between pizzas that aren't rotated at all, those rotated manually and those cooked on the rotating stone. The consistency and ease of use the Ooni Rotating Stone provides are hard to match. If you already own a Koda 2 and use it regularly, it's a relatively small upgrade price to pay for more consistently cooked pizzas.