Building The Fire

Building The Fire

After curing your oven you will be ready to start cooking in it.  Your aim when cooking in the oven is to create, and maintain, a controlled and even heat which is generated from the cooking surface, the dome and the hot air circulating inside the oven.

Build your fire in the middle of the oven, using 7-9 sticks of dry kindling, a couple of fire lighters and 2-3 pieces of medium sized wood.  The flame should reach the centre and front of the dome without reaching too far out of the oven opening.  Once the fire is established, add more medium-sized (wrist-width) wood and wait for about 20 minutes.

At this point you will notice a small white spot at the centre of the oven dome above the fire.  This ‘whitening’ will begin to expand across the top of the dome and is a sign that the oven is reaching the desired cooking temperature.  Once this whitening begins, start building the fire towards the walls by adding wood to either side of it.  Within a few minutes, you will see the whitening spread down the walls of the dome and after a period of time around two thirds of the dome should be white.  At this point the cooking surface should have reached 370 – 400°C – the desired temperature for cooking pizza. The Courtyard and Midi ovens will take around 35-45 minutes from time of lighting to reach a desirable cooking temperature, and the Original oven will take around 50-60minutes.

The basic rule for maintaining high temperatures in the oven is that while the dome remains white it is at an ideal temperature.  Once the dome begins to darken again, the fire needs to be increased.

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