Wood-fired ovens are perfect for cooking pizza, but also bread, roasts, vegetables and focaccia, since wood gives its best during long cooking times, with the ingredient giving dishes different flavors.
For example, oak wood is perfect for imparting a delicate aroma to fish, while maple, walnut and chestnut give meat a strong fragrance.
What kind of wood is best for pizza? Beech and oak wood are certainly a good choice: in addition to their excellent aromatic qualities, these woods have a good caloric yield, producing a beautiful flame and few embers.
One thing to bear in mind when using the oven is that the dimensions are not the same for all models, but can vary depending on the space available and its intended use.
This means that there is no standard amount of wood to be used to light and keep the oven warm. Obviously the larger the oven, the more wood is needed to raise the temperature inside the cooking chamber.
First of all, in order to use the wood-fired oven at its best, you must light the fire properly.
In fact, unlike gas ovens whose lighting is particularly intuitive, wood-fired ovens require a bit of manual skill to be started.
Let’s see how.
How to light a wood-fired oven for the first time
In addition to choosing the most suitable type of wood, it is important to use only small, dry pieces of wood and smaller twigs when lighting the oven.
Furthermore, chemical fuels should never be used to facilitate combustion, because the ashes and embers remain in direct contact with food, especially if you decide to bake pizza on the oven floor.
How to light a wood-fired oven for the first time. The wood holder should be placed in the centre of the oven, then create a small wood frame using straw or dry twigs on top of which small pieces of dry wood can be placed.
Now you can light the fire and leave the oven door ajar to ventilate the cooking chamber and facilitate combustion.
Once the wood has begun to burn and created a good flame, larger pieces of wood can be added to create a more intense fire.
How long before cooking should you light the fire in a wood-fired oven?
Usually 15 or 30 minutes is enough depending on the size of your oven: the important thing is never to put too much wood in at once.
Once lit, how do you manage a wood-fired oven? As soon as the wood is burning well and some of it has been consumed, turning into hot coals, the fire can be moved to the side.
If you wish, you can light the fire directly on the side, but remember to always place the fire on the opposite side of the pyrometer to make sure that the temperature reading is correct.
Once the combustion has begun, you can close the door and bring the oven to the desired temperature.
How do you know when the oven is ready?
You just need to reach the temperature necessary to cook whatever recipe you are making and you can do this in two ways:
- Using the pyrometer on the side of the oven and measuring the heat of the air inside the baking chamber
- With a laser thermometer that detects the temperature of the cooking floor, particularly useful if you want to bake pizzas on a dish.
Once the desired temperature has been reached and all the dark soot on the inside of the oven has burnt off, the food can be placed in the oven.
Obviously a quality wood-fired oven will make all the difference in terms of the time and amount of wood to be used and in maintaining the temperature.
Once the food has been cooked, simply close the door and wait for the combustion to finish and the ash to form.
The fire should be out and the oven completely cold after about an hour, at which point you can proceed with cleaning the wood-fired oven. Remove the small residual coals and accumulated ash, placing them in a heat-resistant metal container.