7
wood in chunks or cut smaller for smokers and
wood fired ovens.
Just like the oven inside your home or an outdoor
gas cooking appliance a wood fired oven will re-
quire a certain amount of cleaning and mainte-
nance after usage.
By design the chimney flue of wood fired ovens
are undersized for maximum heat retention. This
will cause smoke spillage out of the front of the
oven opening and leave soot, creosote or smoke
stains on the face of the ovens exterior. This spill-
age and staining is common on all rands of wood-
fired ovens without power vented chimneys. The
degree of staining will vary depending type of
wood used for cooking, how cured the wood is,
amount and length of usage, wind direction and
speed along with several other factors that will
vary with each application. This adds character and
gives an authentic old world appearance to your
oven ut the staining can easily e removed with a
wire rush and water or y using a masonry clean-
ing solution for soot and smoke that can e pur-
chased at most hardware stores, home
improvement stores, specialty fireplace retailers or
on the internet.
Fire management tools are shown in Figure 17.
Figure 17. Fire Management Tools
The sequence for uilding a fire is as follows:
• Build a fire in the center of the oven floor
and develop a good a ed of coals. The
size will depend on what is to e cooked
and the quantity.
• Heat the oven to 350° to 600°F. This may
take as much as two hours. Heating a ove
800°F is not recommended.
• When desired temperature is reached, push
the fire and coals to the rear and sides of
the oven. Sweep fine ashes to the sides and
ack of the oven using a wire ash rush.
Use one of the tools shown in Figure 14.
• Insert pizzas and cook directly on the oven
floor.
• Add wood as necessary to maintain de-
sired temperature. If cooking several piz-
zas, it may e necessary to pull the fire
ack to the middle to reheat the floor and
repeat the process.
5.3 Cooking
If the oven has een exposed to moisture 48 hours
prior to use, uild a small fire and heat the oven to
250-300°F for two hours efore increasing the heat
to cooking temperature. An easy solution is to urn
an 8-10 pound ag of match lite charcoal and let it
urn completely. This will slowly dry out the mois-
ture that the oven has a sor ed.
As stated, we recommend cooking in a temperature
range of 350° to 600°F. Time of cooking will de-
pend on the temperature and the item eing
cooked. The floor is the heat source that will do
most of the cooking. An infra-red temperature
gauge like that shown in Figure 18 can e used to
measure temperature at any location in and around
the oven.
Cooking pizza in a wood-fired oven is somewhat
like grilling or smoking meats in that there are
many varia les such as the type of wood used, am-
ient temperature and humidity, oven temperature
and thickness of crust and toppings, that affect the
outcome, Be prepared to spend a few times testing
recipes and techniques. Practice and experimenta-
tion will show how to est cook your favorite style
of pizza.
• A traditional Italian pizza with a thick
crust and a thin layer of toppings should
cook at 600°F or hotter for 3-6 minutes.
• For thicker pizzas with heavier toppings,
lower temperatures are required to thor-
oughly cook without urning.
• A medium pizza with heavy toppings may
cook est at 400°F-500°F and will require
a longer cooking times, perhaps 15-25
minutes.
Cook the pizza directly on the floor of the oven.
Place it in the oven using a long-handled paddle
called a peel, using hot mitts or hot pads. Slide the
pizza from the preparation surface to the peel, and
then onto the cooking surface using a slight jerking
technique.
