Collection: Wood-Fired Ovens

Dedicated pizza ovens, especially wood fired ovens, are able to cook such perfect pizzas by combining conductive, convective and radiation heat processes to make delicious pizza, roasts, casseroles, breads and any number of other foods.

Conduction: This is heat transferred through direct contact (pizza touching the hot oven floor)

Convection: This is hot air naturally circulating inside the oven

Radiation: The heat released from the fire and heated inner oven surfaces (it is the primary method of cooking in a wood fire oven)

The hearth (the floor/cooking surface) conducts heat directly into the crust, while the airflow created to feed the fire also cooks through convection. At the same time, radiant heat from the fire reflects off the domed interior to cook the top of the pizza.

Yes, there is a another practical style of wood fired ovens called a “white oven” or "dual-chamber", which is a design seen in some wood fire ovens in which the fire sits in a separate component below the cooking chamber.

Tuscan Chef Ovens are designed in this style. These ovens have a separate firebox that allows wood smoke flavor to enter the upper oven, but the food doesn't come in contact with the ashes like with traditional single chamber pizza oven designs.

The smoke and heat circulate like in a traditional oven and the "stacked" configuration allows a much smaller footprint than units in which the fire is contained within the cooking oven.

Yes. There are some units that cook with wood but feature a gas burner to speed the lighting and heating process. The gas burner is not intended for cooking. The embers are still needed to heat the hearth for conduction cooking and to produce the wood smoke for authentic flavor.

You need to look for oven units that are UL certified in order for it to be allowed for indoor use.

The wood fire ovens line from Chicago Brick Ovens are UL certified.

Classic, traditional wood-fired ovens often weigh multiple thousands of pounds, take days to build (if building one from scratch), need to be cured and require hours of preheating for each cooking session.

Modern smaller home pizza ovens (even wood-fire varieties) are lighter, easier to assemble and allow quicker heat-ups.

Curing is the process of removing any residual trapped moisture and dust that may have built up during the manufacturing stage. It takes a period of several days to complete.

Skipping this critical step and cooking at high temperatures right away will force this excess moisture out of the oven walls too quickly, causing large cracks to appear, reducing the lifespan of your oven, and potentially leading to premature failure.

If you did not protect your brick oven with a cover while it was not in use and it became wet from rain or snow, or if it sat idle for a couple of months, then it would be necessary to cure it again.

Otherwise, not doing so could cause the masonry to develop large, potentially damaging cracks during future high-temperature firings.

Stack your wood properly: Use half-cut logs or other pieces of wood that are similar in size, and stack them in a crisscross fashion. In other words, start by placing the first two logs with equal spacing between them. (The air gap is important because it helps with oxygen flow for the fire). Then place two more logs right across the top. After you have built this "fort", move it to the center of the oven surface.

Now to light it: Use a handy tool like a fire starter and insert it into the air gap after igniting it. Alternatively, you can use newspaper or kindling to get the fire started with a quick touch of a BBQ lighter.

Once the embers are self-sustaining and this initial pile of wood begins to break down, start adding more wood to intensify the flames until the oven floor and internal temperature reach your desired level. This can take a while. Depending on how long you plan to cook, you can use either chunks or full logs.

Once you are ready to insert your pizza, move the burning wood to either the left or right side, or to the back of the oven. Then wipe the ash off the area where you’ll be cooking the pizzas using a damp (not soaking wet) rag.

Quick Tips...

• DO NOT use any igniters or fire starters that contain lighter fluid or petroleum to light your pizza oven. Why? Because the oven can absorb the smell and taste of these chemicals, which can cause your food to smell and taste terrible. The key here is to use natural fire starters instead.
• It’s best to start your fire in the center of the pizza oven to ensure that the base of the oven heats up as much as possible.
• Know what you’re cooking! If you’re making pizzas that require a very high temperature (like Neapolitan-style), you’ll need to get the fire very hot. Expect to use a little more wood to keep the fire going, and keep in mind that it may take longer to bring the oven up to temperature.
• If you want to cook something more slowly (such as baking bread), you won’t need to use as much wood, since the fire doesn’t need to be as hot as it does for pizzas.

There are different methods for starting a fire in a wood fire oven. Once you've got a fire started, slowly build it up over a period of 45 minutes to a couple of hours until the cooking floor is anywhere from 700°F to 900°F.

Once hot, the oven's mass will hold heat for however long your particular oven normally does, which allows high temperatures to be maintained with just a small fire or a pile of coals, usually pushed to the back or side of the oven (depending on how large your oven is).

Realistically, you can't prevent your brick from cracking because, sooner or later, these small cracks will begin to form in the outer and/or inner walls, even after you complete the initial curing process and maintain your oven properly. This is normal. These types of cracks (even slightly larger ones) do not pose a structural integrity issue, especially for heavily layered units. You can continue to use your oven and expect normal performance.

What does curing look like? Refer to your user manual, as each manufacturer’s guidelines vary. However, in general, low-temperature fires are key to a proper curing process.