It took me a whole summer but I'm finally getting consistent results from the pizza oven.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Bread
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I'm so jealous of that outdoor wood-fired oven. I have some homemade sourdough pizzas that would be marvelous baked in that beauty.
There are loads of them on sale ranging from reasonable to insanely over priced.
If you ever look into getting one keep in mind that the stainless interior does not hold heat it only reflects it. When there is an active flame it acts like the broiler in your oven with heat from the tile conducting up and heat from the fire radiating down. As soon as the flame goes out it's in 'bake' mode, most of the heat at that point is in the form of hot air convecting around. These are kinda 'new' in the wood fired world so there isn't a whole lot about them past the marketing media.
A full brick/concrete interior takes a long time to get up to temperature because the masonry will soak up a lot. But once it it up to temperature it will take forever to cool back down as the heat is radiated back into the oven. This is the more conventional way to do things so there is a lot more online on how to work with one.
There are also the propane ovens which are super convenient but no where near as fun.
Thanks for the info. I've heard they take a while to heat up. How much time do you need to fire it up and preheat prior to baking the bread?
Usually 40min to an hour to get the floor hot and build up a bed of coals. Once the flames are out though there is time to do at least 2 batches.
Wow, that's faster than I thought. One hour to prep gives a few hours of heat. If you're making your own bread dough, you're probably waiting for the final rise while you stoke the oven.
Exactly, I light it just before shaping and proofing. I'll build an unreasonably roaring fire from very small pieces of wood that settles down to coals pretty quickly. Then the temperature can be maintained by adding fuel a tiny bit at a time until the dough is ready. It's fickle but more fun than working indoors.