Cooking in a Wood-Fired Oven: A Beginner's Guide to Pizza, Bread and Roasts on One Firing
A wood-fired oven stores heat in its walls, so one fire can cook for hours. The trick is cooking in the right order as the temperature falls: pizza first, then roasts, then bread and slow dishes.
Just finished building? Read how to cure the oven first. For bread basics, see our beginner's bread guide.
The cooking order
| Stage | Oven temperature | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Fire in the oven | 650 F and up (floor about 650 to 700 F on an infrared thermometer) | Pizza, flatbreads |
| Roasting | About 450 to 600 F | Meat and vegetables in a hot pan, with a medium bed of coals and a small 2 to 4 inch flame, door off for under an hour or partly closed for longer roasts |
| Baking | 500 F and below | Bread, desserts, beans, pasta and smaller roasts, after raking out the coals, brushing the floor and shutting the door tightly |
Wood-fired oven makers describe the order as pizza first, then roasting, then baking, because the oven loses heat steadily once the fire is out.
How big a fire?
You can only get out the heat you put in. For a weeknight pizza, fire only until the dome turns white (the soot burns off). For a big baking day, fire longer. An oven that is pizza-ready in about 45 minutes usually takes 7 or 8 sticks of wood, adding one piece every 15 to 20 minutes.
Practical tips
- Rotate pans. The side nearest the fire or coals runs hotter.
- Use heavy pans. Cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens handle the heat; preheat them for sear marks.
- Use a probe thermometer. The USDA's safe minimums are 165 F for poultry, 160 F for ground meat, and 145 F for whole cuts of pork and fish. A wood oven does not heat evenly, so check the thickest part.
- Plan the day backwards. Pizza when the fire is out, bread as it falls, then a pot of beans in the cooling oven overnight.
Recipes and a bake-day plan for your oven
The Homestead Cob Oven Build Guide includes pizza dough, flatbread, crusty bread, roasts and cooling-oven recipes with temperatures and times. For many more loaves, The Homestead Bread Book has 23 scratch recipes.
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