Wood fire cooking is becoming more popular as chefs and home cooks increasingly use this ancient cooking method to add some spices to their dishes. This “old-fashioned” cooking method certainly helps create unique flavors that cannot be achieved with other fuel methods such as gas or electricity.
So how is food cooked in these wood-fired ovens? Putting pieces of wood in such a furnace creates fire and heat, which is absorbed by the furnace; This is what we call the cooking stage. Depending on the style of the wood burning oven, lighting the fire to a maximum temperature of more than 932 ° F can take from 30 minutes to three hours. Our advice is not to only turn on the oven for one type of food such as pizza, but to plan some dishes to be cooked only once.
In this way, heat is generated again to cook different foods that you put in the oven. After cleaning the embers and the oven begins to cool for a few hours, or even days (depending on the insulation of the oven and the outside temperature) and the temperature gradually drops, the retained heat can be used to cook multiple batches of food. .
You need to plan the sequence of dishes you want to put in the wood oven and at what intervals. You can start with the dish that needs the most heat and leave the one that needs the least heat last. Use a suitable handheld oven thermometer to track the temperature inside and add or remove pieces of wood to set the proper temperature for the food.
To increase the temperature again (if you feel the current temperature is too low for your food), simply add another piece of log. If needed, you can also keep a small fire in the oven to help retain heat in the oven.
The type of firewood you use can also affect oven temperatures. Most professional cooks use dry, well-seasoned hardwood such as oak, fruitwood, walnut, olive, avocado, walnut, or almond. Do not use charcoal or resinous woods like pine or fir, as they can affect the flavor of your dishes.
Pizzas, flatbreads and sandwiches can be cooked to temperatures between 572 ° F – 1000 ° F by placing them on the very hot oven floor. Additionally, barbecued meat, chicken, and steaks can be cooked at higher temperatures (usually on a grill in the oven). Once the temperature cools to about 662 ° F, you can add veggies like onions, eggplants, mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes, and bell peppers, or meatballs, ribs, and chicken wings. Pastry items such as cakes, scones, and muffins can be cooked at temperatures between 482 ° F to 536 ° F, and bread, dough, gratins, fish, squid, and scallops between 212 ° F and 392 ° F.
You can use the remaining low heat to cook desserts and certain cuts of meats that need to be very tender. These temperatures are just a guide, and the best thing to do is get to know your wood-burning oven thoroughly, as different wood-burning ovens work differently.
You can also place different types of food inside to achieve more than one cooking style or recipe. Try experimenting with placing your food in different areas of the oven, for example the oven floor, or placing the food in small pots or pans to broil, broil, or boil.
Finally, when you cook in a wood oven, you can certainly create the most delicious recipes with healthy, authentic and creative dishes suitable for anyone. Not only that, it’s also a lot of fun!