(flames igniting)
(soothing music)
- Hi, I'm Dave and this is Austin eats.
I love to cook.
I also love to barbecue.
But hands down,
my favorite way of cooking is in a wood-fired oven.
There's just something primitive and raw
about cooking with fire.
It's soothing to tend the fire,
breathe life into it,
and then use it to cook.
This is by far the most rewarding way to cook
that I've ever found.
Wood fired ovens have been around
for thousands of years.
They're efficient,
they're easy and they're fairly inexpensive to operate.
Once you own the oven, of course.
They're also very versatile.
I've cooked lamb chops and filets and ribeyes
and roasted vegetables and made fire roasted salsa.
I've also made a whole lot of pizza in this oven.
A wood fired oven is actually incredibly simple.
There's really only four parts to it.
There's the floor that you do most of your cooking on.
Of course, that may be different
if you're cooking a steak
or something like that on a raised grate.
There's the dome,
which helps contain the heat
and provide the convection
effect of a pizza oven.
Of course, there's the chimney
where all the smoke is gonna go.
And there's the door.
The door serves actually very little function.
You actually don't use it when you cook at all.
In fact, the manufacturer of this oven
suggests never closing the door when cooking.
I think there's two reasons for that.
Number one, the door probably can't handle
the heat of an intense fire inside the oven.
And number two, if you close the door,
there goes the oxygen and the fire is just gonna go out.
The door really serves a decorative function.
I keep it closed when I'm not using the oven
to keep the elements out
and wide open when I'm cooking.
There is a time, however,
where I will bake in this oven with the door closed.
And that is only in circumstances where I've had a hot fire,
I've cooked what I wanted,
and the temperature has come down about 450 degrees.
And at that point, I'll put in a couple of loaves of bread,
loaded into cast iron Dutch ovens,
close the door then when there's no fire
and that'll help keep that heat in
until I'm ready to bring them out.
A pizza oven cooks by using three different types of heat.
First there's radiant heat.
That comes from the fire that's built
on the floor of the oven.
The heat of the fire is absorbed into the floor
and radiates back into the oven as you're cooking.
This is what turns the bottom of the pizza crust
nice and crisp.
Second, there's convection heat.
This is created when hot air from the fire
flows up and around the dome.
The dome channels all of that air
and basically is creating a giant convection oven.
Third, is direct heat.
That occurs when the fire is rolling up the back
and the top of the oven and acting basically
like a giant broiler and cooking the food from the top.
There's a handful of tools that are real helpful
in using a wood-fired oven.
And I admittedly own a lot of tools that I don't use.
And I hope my wife didn't hear that.
At the top of the list is a fancy pizza peel.
that's used to build the pizza
and then transfer it into the oven.
It looks pretty, but for me, it just doesn't work.
I find that the pizza tends to stick on this
and I make more calzones than pizzas with this.
So not a fan.
I also have an andiron.
This is basically just a small device that sits in the back
of the oven that you can use to stack your wood on top of.
The whole idea is to create greater air flow around it.
I find that it actually just takes up too much real estate
in this particular oven.
This oven is only 28 inches across and 38 back to back,
which means it's a 28 inch diameter
and it has a 10 inch tunnel.
So if this is in the back of the oven,
I've already given up about eight or nine inches.
And if it's butted up against the wall
and then I can't push it back any further,
well, it just takes up too much room.
So I've used it once.
There are smaller ones on the market,
but I have learned how to control the oven
and stack the wood in a way
that I'm going to get good air flow.
So just don't need it.
Some tools that I do use include a wood pizza peel.
So this is what I use to actually build the pizzas.
I find that if I put a little coarsely ground semolina flour
on this before putting the pizza dough on
that the finished pizza will
just slide right off it into the oven.
So that is a great tool.
This is by far the most versatile tool that I have.
So this is great for getting way into the back of the oven
and being able to manipulate and extract the pizza.
It's also pretty good for bullying around some of the logs
that have to be moved.
When a log is on fire,
and you gotta move it from one side
of the oven to the other, this is one of the go-to tools.
I can reach in, pick it up and relocate it where I need it.
It's also great to add a log to the back of the fire.
I just bounce one across the top,
stick it in the back and scoot it on in.
A great tool. This is a go-to.
So this is another one of my go-to tools.
This is an ash rake.
It's about five and a half feet long.
Has this cupped end into it,
which allows me to get into the oven,
grab the ashes and pull them out of the oven.
The curved contour allows me to basically
get pretty close to the oven wall
and not leave too many ashes inside.
Because this is heavy duty,
I use it frequently to manhandle the logs.
When it's time to scoot them back,
I'll get in and push this thing around,
push the logs around.
That's why it's so charred.
A great go-to tool.
Next up is a nice long fireplace poker.
This is great if I have to get into the back of the oven
and really move some logs around
and I can't do it with a pizza peel.
I haven't used it much, but when I need it, I need it.
Next up is a wire brush with a metal plate on the back side.
This is my go-to tool for cleaning the oven.
When I'm all done cooking and the oven has cooled,
I can get in with this brush and pull any remaining ashes
out that the ash rake did not get.
Then by turning it over and using
the flat metal piece in the back,
I can drag it across the bottom
and get the bottom of the oven really fairly clean.
This sees a lot of work.
And finally we have the most dangerous tool of all.
This is a five and a half foot piece
of half-inch copper pipe with a little reducer
down to a quarter inch on the end.
This is real helpful. If I have to stoke a fire.
When you're cooking with wood,
if the fire starts to go out and you add a log to it,
it doesn't always just light right back up.
Sometimes it needs a little air to get going.
So this can go into the back of the oven
and give me plenty of room to be clear of the door
and blow some air through the other end.
And I do that, not by mouth, but with an air compressor.
Key point, you don't wanna run the air compressor
above 20 PSI.
If you do,
you're going to put too much oxygen in that fire
and it will feed the beast.
If you've ever seen the movie "Backdraft,"
you know how bad that can be. Ask me how I know that.
And finally,
you need some good welding gloves and some great potholders.
'Cause there's nothing worse than
touching a panhandle that's 600 degrees.
I have tried all different kinds of wood.
I've used apple and cherry and various kinds of oak.
And I finally settled on this particular type of oak.
This is a kiln dried Oak.
It comes in 16 inch lengths and is specifically designed
for use in a pizza oven.
Why?
The width is between one and two inches.
So the length and that width are just perfect
for building a fire and maintaining a fire
in this size oven.
It's a little bit more expensive,
but if you buy a couple of racks of it,
the shipping cost makes it actually very reasonable.
This is now the only wood that I use.
Cooking in a wood-fired oven is a ton of fun
and you don't have to spend a lot of money
to get started.
My first wood-fired oven was a small table top model
costing only about $600.
In my next video,
I'll talk about starting up a wood-fired oven,
keeping it going and cooking in it.
If you liked the video, please let me know.
You can find a lot of our recipes on austin-eats.com.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.
on Austin Eats.