Wood fired cooking

 Wood fired pizza ovens are a popular purchase for London homeowners. Summer will be here before you know it and a garden pizza oven can be an excellent addition to the home and a great experience to be shared with friends and family.

 

Pizza ovens reach extremely high temperatures, (we are talking 500-700 degrees F!) and are great not only for cooking pizzas in a short amount of time, but also for adding a unique flavour to braising meats. The added flavour is just one of the benefits that may make you want to invest in one for yourself :

 

  • Radiation - Higher performance than an open fire as the heat source radiates all around the oven, which also retains a great deal of the heat.

  • Convection - As the flame is situated on one side of the oven, this helps to better circulate heat around, in a similar way that a fan assisted kitchen oven does. 

  • Conduction -  The materials used to construct a pizza ovens help to retain and transfer the heat directly to the food that’s being cooked.

Wood Logs



Benefits of wood fired cooking

 

Because pizza ovens reach very high temperatures at a much faster rate than traditional cooking stoves and ovens, a regular pizza can take just 3-4 minutes to cook! - And it’s not just pizza, but many cooks also bake bread and roast meat and vegetables in such ovens. Besides this, there are also health benefits associated with cooking this way. Nutrients in food are often destroyed by prolonged cooking times, so when food is cooked quickly it retains more of the nutrients. Wood fires are an ancient method of preparing food and they certainly knew what they were doing back then! - Food cooked over a wood fire tastes spectacular. By using different species of wood, you can influence the taste of your food. 


Wood Logs

Which Wood to choose for your pizza oven?

 

The wood you used in your oven is an extremely important factor and can either make or break your fancy wood fired dinner! - Any wood you use must be dry. Wet, or unseasoned wood, results in a huge amount of smoke being generated, not to mention the harmful chemicals and tar which are also present in green wood. The best wood to burn is wood that has 20% moisture content or lower. Dry wood logs ensure a clean burn that’s hotter and burns for longer. 

 

You can chop your own firewood, just make sure that it is dry before using it. Kiln dried wood logs are a great option because they are dried in a kiln instead of being left outside, which can result in uneven moisture distribution. Kiln drying ensures that your logs are sufficiently dry and free from fungus and insect infestation.

 

The tree you use to source your logs from also makes a big difference to the properties of your fire. Popular firewood includes hardwoods such as oak, ash, hickory and beech, which are all dense woods that provide a longer burn time than softwoods.

 

The flavour of your food is also influenced by the type of wood you burn. Mesquite, apple, and olive are a few examples of woods that produce a distinctive aroma and flavour.

 

In short, the benefits of wood fired cooking covered in this article should give you plenty to consider whilst you think about investing in a pizza oven yourself this summer.

 
Location: United Kingdom

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