Correct use of the wood-fired oven.

Master the art of wood-fired cooking with our tips and enjoy delicious dishes. Discover all our secrets!

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The traditional wood-fired oven can be used for a wide range of cooking purposes: pizza, bread, stews. It can also be used to dry and smoke food. Cooking on a wood fire is authentic and brings an unrivalled flavour to your dishes.

But how to use your wood-fired oven properly? What are the methods to adopt for successful cooking? We reveal the tips:

Cooking in a wood-fired oven

An authentic cooking method, the wood-fired oven allows you to return to the cooking of yesteryear. Using this type of oven allows you to bake authentic tasting pizzas, rustic breads, long simmered dishes and smoked foods.

The wood-fired oven can be used in various ways. Several baking methods:

• Cooking with the door open: this is a quick cooking method that allows the smoke to escape. This type of cooking is ideal for your pizzas, meats and fish. You can also keep an eye on it with the door open.
• Cooking with the door closed:  it means a slow cooking. This type of cooking is ideal for dishes that need to simmer and various breads and buns. Cooking with the door closed also makes it possible to use the oven as a smoker.

Firing your oven

Before placing your pizzas, breads and other dishes in your oven, you need to prepare it for cooking. In fact, it is best to do this in advance, about 1 hour, so that your oven has time to heat up properly.

You can prepare newspaper, dry twigs or herbs, firewood and dry logs in advance.

To start, place your twigs or newspaper in the oven, light it and then place your kindling wood on top. Once the fire is burning down, take your logs and place them underneath. Your fire will start to burn and start to warm up the oven with the embers. Be sure to push your fire to the bottom to make room for your dishes.

Don’t forget to keep the fire burning and feed it with your logs. Now your oven is ready to bake your pizzas and bread!

Optimize the cooking process

So, as we have just explained, the wood-fired oven is used with the door open for grilling and pizzas, it is a cooking with the heat of the flame and/or with the door closed with the insulating door, taking advantage of the heat accumulated by the oven to cook bread, simmered dishes, gratins and pastries at a slightly descending heat. In fact, as the oven cools down very slowly, the ideal is to take advantage of this heat to ‘put in’ several dishes that require cooking at lower and lower temperatures:

• first a roast beef for example (250°C)
• then bread (240°C)
• then gratins and cakes (180°C)
• then meringues (100°C) and fruit to dry (80°C)

So the ‘pizza party’ can be followed by a multitude of cooking methods that will allow you to take full advantage of the qualities and inertia of your wood-fired oven…