(serene music)
- I'm Dave, and this is Austin Eats.
In part two of my introduction to cooking
in a wood-fired oven.
I'm gonna talk about how to operate one of these ovens.
I'm gonna talk about how to start it up,
how to get it up to the correct temperature,
how to maintain or adjust that temperature,
how to configure it for cooking and how to shut it down.
Let's get started.
In starting up the wood-fired oven,
I actually want to bring the temperature up rather slowly.
The last thing that I want is a roaring fire in here,
particularly in a cold oven.
Why?
Because it could cause thermal shock and damage the oven.
I also want to start the fire back a little bit.
I start the fire at about 10 inches in,
that is the outer most edge of the fire.
The reason being that first,
I don't need to have the floor in the tunnel, warm at all.
I'm not doing any cooking there.
Second.
I don't want any flame shooting up the chimney.
The chimney has a fire mortar in it,
so the more heat that I keep out of it, the better.
So I'm gonna start by creating a little structure with
some kindling sticks,
and then through a few chunks of
smoking wood on top of that,
it doesn't matter what.
It's only for the purposes of the lighting the fire.
And then on that,
I'm going to lean three pieces of relatively thin firewood.
Once I have it lit,
I'll add the fourth piece.
I'm going to build a structure just like this at the
far end of the tunnel,
gonna lay out three layers of sticks,
followed by four sticks across the top to provide
a bit of a floor.
Now I'm gonna add a couple of chunks of smoking wood.
And then I'll add three of these logs,
like so.
One in the left front, one left rear, one right rear.
And I'll leave the right front open because that's where
I've got to get my torch.
Once it's lit,
I'll add the fourth log.
Just before I light the oven,
I need to get an updraft in the chimney.
That's particularly important in cold weather because cold
air that is sitting in that chimney
will tend to push the heat down.
And then the only place for the smoke
to escape is out the front.
That does two things.
It puts the smoke in your face,
and it smothers the fire.
The best way to do that is simply take some brown packing
paper, place it up there, light it with a torch.
And when you hear it roaring, you have an updraft.
As soon as you see smoke and ash coming
out of the top, you're there.
I throw that underneath, light my torch.
And now we'll light the kindling.
I like using map gas because it's fast.
You never want to use any artificial product
in here to start a fire.
There's lots of products that are available
to start your barbecue that have wax on them.
That'll just make a mess in the oven.
This is the best technique.
I also don't recommend using white paper or newspaper.
It seems to create a lot more ash than heavy brown paper.
Give this about 10 minutes,
and then we'll come back and start adding logs.
(serene music)
So I've now added a few additional logs.
And in the process,
pushed that fire back toward the center of the oven.
Remember that's where I'm going to be cooking.
So the heat that's coming off of these burning logs is being
absorbed by the floor.
And that's what will radiate back up and help them cook.
In another 10 minutes,
we'll come back and push this further into the oven
and add some more wood.
In all,
this should take about an hour to an hour and a half to get
the oven up to the temperature that we need.
(serene music)
To configure the oven to cook.
We're gonna push the coals off of the floor that has now
been raised to the correct operating temperature.
And we're going to blow off the floor.
This is particularly important, if you're making pizza,
you just don't want to consume all that dust and debris
that's on the floor.
For me, a brush just doesn't work well enough.
I like to use my air compressor on about 20, 25 PSI
and just sweep the floor clean.
Once the floor is clean,
I'll double check the operating temperature
with my laser thermometer.
Simply point it at the floor of the oven
and measure the temperature.
I like to cook at somewhere
between 850 and 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
When we're set, we're ready to start cooking.
It's interesting that as the oven heats up,
the walls and the dome will actually turn
black with soot from the fire.
And as it gets to operating temperature,
all that soot burns off and the walls turn white again,
While I'm cooking,
I want to maintain that operating temperature
of 850 to 900 degrees.
That's particularly important if I'm making pizza.
If it falls much below that temperature range,
now the crust won't be done on the bottom,
but the sides and top of the pizza will be.
So it's important to keep that 850 to 900 degree temperature
range.
If the temperature of the floor does fall,
I'll take the ash rake and pull forward some of those hot
coals from the back of the oven.
That will then heat the center floor back up
and in about 15 minutes,
I'll push them back,
maybe throw on another log and I'm ready to cook again.
A lot of people that cook in a wood-fired oven will
configure the coals on the side wall for doing a pizza.
I find that to be rather difficult.
This oven is only 28 inches in diameter,
and it's just frankly,
too difficult to move the coals to the side of the oven.
I find it far easier to push the coals all
the way to the back.
So I always cook with the coals in the back of the oven.
Does it make a difference?
No, not really.
I still have the pizza 6 to 7 inches from the fire,
whether it's on the side or the back,
it's simply a matter of personal preference.
I use the 850 to 900 degree range for cooking most items,
whether it's a pizza on the floor of the oven or vegetables
in a cast iron skillet, or clams casino in a cast iron
skillet.
I'm always cooking it at 850 to 900 degree range,
gives me the best results.
If I'm baking bread inside a cast iron Dutch oven,
then I want the temperature down around the 450 to 475
range.
And to shut down the oven.
I use the ash rake to pull all the coals forward \
and spread them out in the center of the oven.
In an inch and a half to two inches thick.
And I just let 'em sit there.
So anywhere that I had pizza,
I put the coals.
That way,
if I have a stray piece of cheese or a piece of pepperoni
or a mushroom that fell off
and stuck the bottom of the oven.
This will burn it right off and make it clean
without any scrubbing or scraping.
Then I walk away with the door open.
Again, with this kind of oven,
you really don't want to shut it down any other way.
Now,
if the coals are pretty much just glowing embers
and there's no active fire,
you can certainly close the door and walk away.
In an upcoming video,
I'm going to talk about some of the common
mistakes made in preparing your pizza dough.
Spoiler alert.
The dough you make for a wood-fired oven is very different
than the dough you would make for a
pizza stone in a conventional oven.
If you liked the video,
please let me know.
And please subscribe,
we're going to be putting out videos
like this every week.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.
On Austin Eats.