Omnia Oven

Even though I’d dabbled in camp-stove baking, I was never inspired to do much beyond cooking frozen pizzas. When I happened across the Omnia oven I was intrigued by how simple and compact it is compared to the other systems I’ve used.

Photographs by the author

The basic oven kit includes (back row, left to right) the stainless-steel base, the aluminum mold, and the enameled lid. The options I added (front row, left to right) are the stainless-steel oven rack and silicone mold.

It has a stainless-steel base with a hole in the middle to allow the heat of a camp stove to pass through it. The center element, made of aluminum and called the mold, is nearly identical to a bundt pan. The open cylinder in the middle brings the heat to the top of the mold and reduces the risk of overbaking the outside of food while waiting for the middle to be cooked. The enameled lid has a knob handle on the top and six small ventilation holes in the side, sized to accommodate Omnia’s optional dial thermometer.

Most Omnia baking projects require a low heat, so a camp stove that can maintain a low to medium flame is all that’s required. The folding digital thermometer at left was a good tool for monitoring the temperature in the oven. The pot pliers at right came in handy for moving the hot mold.

For baking with the Omnia, I use my compact Gas One Mini dual-fuel camp stove with a butane canister for fuel. One of the repeated complaints I had found in the oven’s reviews is that food touching the base of the oven and the inner ring of the mold can easily get scorched, so it’s important to use a low flame. The best way to regulate the temperature is to use a thermometer. Omnia’s optional dial thermometer, fixed in one of the holes in the lid, measures the temperature in the upper part of the oven. Removed from the lid, it can be used as a probe to read the internal temperature in the food being baked. Rather than buying Omnia’s dial thermometer, I used a digital meat thermometer that I already owned which has a probe sized to fit the holes. With its probe inserted through a hole in the lid, I could read temperature fluctuations in temperature quickly and accurately on its digital readout and make fine adjustments to keep the oven very close to the target setting.

I did, however, buy two of the many other options offered by Omnia: a stainless-steel oven rack and a BPA-free silicone mold. Both reduce the risk of food being scorched at the bottom of the oven, and the mold is nonstick and easily cleaned.

My wrapping of the pizza dough around the fillings wasn’t pretty, but the calzone I made was tasty. The silicone mold helped to avoid scorching the dough and simplified clean-up.

My early trials with the Omnia went very well. Pizza, one of my favorite indulgences at anchor, isn’t well suited to the shape of the Omnia mold, but calzone, a pizza folded around the toppings, is. Using store-bought frozen dough with grated cheese and tomato sauce, I made a ring-shaped calzone. Omnia’s recipe called for cooking on medium heat for 30 to 40 minutes but didn’t specify a target temperature for the thermometer; I used 350°. The calzone came out very well despite my clumsy work with the dough; it was cooked through and there were only two small scorched spots where the dough had been in contact with the mold’s chimney.

Once I had popped the calzone out of the mold, I could see that its bottom was a nice golden brown.

I was concerned about fuel consumption for the long cooking times required by baking recipes, so I weighed the butane canister before and after baking two batches of cookies. For the first batch I placed seven well-spaced 1″ balls of dough on parchment paper resting on the oven rack; the second batch was a closely spaced dozen. The first batch consumed 21g of butane over the 13 minutes it took to bake the cookies, the second used 26g for 20 minutes of baking time. At that rate, the 8-oz/227g canister would provide a reassuring 2 hours and 39 minutes of baking time; in terms of cookies, that would make 10 average batches.

The oven rack, with a cut-out of parchment paper on top of it, worked well for baking chocolate-chip cookies. I’ve already eaten one from this batch and two have been flipped over to show the evenly cooked bottoms.

I’d never baked a yeasted bread either at home or in camp, but I was eager to try the Omnia manual’s simple recipe for thyme bread. Set in the silicone mold, buttered and lined with sesame seeds, the bread baked thoroughly, without scorching, and turned out even better than I’d hoped, with an artisan bread’s crispy crust and fluffy interior.

The yeasted thyme bread, with sesame seeds baked on the crust, was surprisingly good, especially while it was still warm.

The Omnia oven’s three components, plus the silicone mold and the oven rack, all nest together in a stack 3 1⁄2″ high and 10″ in diameter and fit in the nylon stuff sack included with the oven. The compact 1 lb 12 oz package is well suited to small boats. The prospect of adding freshly baked goods to camp-cruising cuisine makes the Omnia system a welcome addition onboard.

Christopher Cunningham is editor at large of Small Boats.

The Omnia oven and accessories are available direct from Omina or from a worldwide network of retailers. I paid $59.99 for the oven, $26.99 for the silicone mold, and $17.99 for the oven rack.

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