In this post, I will cover one of the most important and maybe challenging subjects when you own a wood-fired pizza oven.
How do you heat up the oven to reach the desired temperature? How do you maintain the heat? What else can you do to use the heat to its fullest potential?
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Page Contents
How Do You Get Your Fire Started?
To get the fire started, you will need the following equipment:
- Two pieces of firestarter, matches and scrunched up paper (e.g.Newspaper)
starting the fire
- kindling
- plenty of dry firewood
- heat resistant hand gloves
- pizza oven rake
Put the kindling, paper, and fire starter together into a pile and start stacking the dry firewood logs around it. It should look like a little tower.
Carefully move this pile with your hands inside the oven chamber. To push it deeper inside you need to use the oven rake.
Now you can lite the fire with the matches. It should only take a few minutes until the wood starts burning.
How Do I Reach The Desired Temperature?
After you started the fire, keep adding wood to build up the heat. You need to keep feeding the fire.
The best temperature to cook pizza is at around 750 Fahrenheit (400 Celsius). If you use a brick oven, the pre-heating time will take between 1,5 to 2 hours to get to this temperature.
The actual cooking is not on the fire but from the heat that has been stored on the floor, the walls and the dome. That means while you preheat the oven, shift the fire around with the help of the oven rake. Don’t forget to use the heat resistant gloves. It will be scorching by now!
After 1,5 hours it is time to check the temperature. Either your oven has a built-in thermometer, or you could use a handheld Temperature Gun. In general, I recommended using a temperature gun because it measures the heat more accurately than a built-in thermometer.
My review about infrared thermometers also shows you so many more uses, not only for cooking.
Getting Hungry?
Chicken wings
While you are busy heating up the oven and shifting the wood around, I am sure you will be pretty hungry by now. Here is a tip: start cooking your first dishes.
You can put bacon, sausages, vegetables or chicken wings into a casserole dish and put it into the oven. They will be ready in no time.
In the meantime, you can get all the ingredients for your pizza ready!
Read more about my all-time favorite pizza recipe here.
The Temperature Is Right, Yippie!
Excellent job, well done. The wait is over.
The oven has reached a temperature of 750 Fahrenheit (400 Celsius). But before you can put the pizza in, you need to shift the burned wood on one site. The cleared area is still covered in a bit of dust and ashes. So you don’t want this to be on your pizza. With the help of a pizza oven brush, we will clean the area.
Now the exciting part: put the pizza in the oven by using a pizza peel. Sprinkle the pizza peel with some flour first so the pizza can slide off easily. While the pizza is cooking, it is important to turn it every 30 seconds. That way the pizza cooks evenly.
After roughly two minutes you can enjoy a perfectly cooked pizza with a yummy crunchy crust and crispy cooked toppings. Delectable!
The perfect pizza
What Else Can You Do To Use The Heat?
Besides cooking pizza, you can use the heat to cook several other delicious meals. As mentioned before, you could put a casserole dish with chicken wings, sausages, vegetables or potatoes into the oven. It is also a fantastic idea to put a cast iron grill rack on top of the embers and cook the most flavorsome steaks.
The great thing about a brick oven is that it will retain the heat for hours. For instance, after you have finished cooking your pizza etc., seal the oven with a door and come back in the morning. By the morning, the temperature will be decreased down to approx. 400/450 Fahrenheit (200/250 Celcius). This is the perfect temperature to bake a bread or to cook breakfast.
Another option is to slow cook some pork, beef or lamb for lunch or dinner. All it takes is a bit of planning and preparation. 🙂
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me or leave a comment in the box below.
Happy Cooking Everyone!
Anke
Far out man that is a great idea!Pizza oven mama mia!makes me want one the problem is I don’t have one!Your review was simple and easy to understand and in some way the Pizza oven sounds like a great asset to have and the different uses the oven does like cooking meats and breads sounds very useful indeed.
Thank you for your review I have learn’t a lot here.
Thanks Sonny. I am glad my post was easy to read and to understand. I reckon that having a Pizza oven surely is a great asset to have. Your friends and family will love you for it.
Cheers Anke
Wow great article, I am so hungry at the moment. Fantastic tips on cooking somethings while the oven is heating up, I hadn’t thought of that before. We are building a new house at the moment I would like a pizza oven out back, you have convinced me that I really do need one. Cheers 🙂
Hi Tracy, that’s awesome that you are building a new house at the moment. Yes, a pizza oven would be a great addition. In my opinion , it adds fantastic value to the property. If you are interested, please check out my review about portable outdoor pizza ovens. I am currently in the process of reviewing a great non-portable brick oven. So please, stay tuned!
All the best Anke
I cooked in an Italian restaurant for 7 years. I still love to cook and dream of having (actually making) a wood fired pizza oven. It does take some practice getting to know how to use them. Do you have any suggestions on building your own pizza oven on your site? The idea is to have those pizza parties when the weather is nice and feed an army of friends 🙂
Marc
Hi there Marc,
wow, that is an impressive number of years working in an Italian restaurant!
It does take time to get used to a wood fired oven. Every oven is different and it depends on the wood you use as well. In regards to building your own wood fired oven, I don’t have any suggestions on my site yet. I have started my research though and have spoken to a couple of people who have built their own. One of my friends pointed out the importance of insulating the oven. It can be quite costly but worth it in the end.
From what I have gathered so far is that the costs of buying an pre-made one like the Outdoor pizza oven are pretty similar to getting the material and plans to build your own. But I will look into it in more detail very soon. The portable pizza party oven is also a fantastic alternative especially for having parties for family and friends. You can take the oven wherever you go – pretty cool I think.
All the best from Anke
we just assemble a Felici Italian oven and started the fire todaya s a trial,
tomorrow we have guest and cooking hopefully Pizza and while its getting warm a chicken
with potatoes
Thank you for your article
Frederic
Hi Frederic, that sounds delicious. I am sure everything will cook well and your guests will love the pizza. That is the beauty of a wood-fired pizza oven; you can cook so many different dishes in there according to the temperatures.
Thank you so much for your comment and Happy Cooking!
~ Anke
Have you ever used the big mesquite charcoal to heat the oven? Will that work? Thanks
No, I haven’t sorry. But maybe one of my readers has? Please chime in with a comment if you can.
I have attempted my wood burning pizza oven twice and both times the stone gets too hot and the actual oven isn’t hot enough. Even with me constantly moving the pizza the bottom is black and the top is not cooked.
Hi Angela, what kind of pizza oven do you own?