A lot of customers are curious about what we burn, and the process of getting our woodfired ovens up to cooking temperature. My honest answer is that each oven is a cruel mistress, and we’re all still learning as we go, but we can share a few nuggets of wisdom that we’ve picked up over the years.
What do we burn?
The fuel used on a woodfired oven is absolutely key to a good pizza. It needs to be super dry, with a moisture content ideally below 15%. We use offcuts of kiln dried oak and walnut from a local company called Eighty Five Carpentry. You can check out their awesome furniture here. Some people even say the type of wood can impart a bit of flavour to the food being cooked, with apple wood being a particularly good one for this (although we’re yet to try it). We combine this wood with high density briquettes made from compressed sawdust. They’re simply compressed with a high heat, with no chemical additives, making them safe for cooking. We recommend White Horse Energy for quality, environmentally friendly briquettes.
When do you light the oven?
This actually varies between our different vans. The Mid Devon van has a French oven. We light a fire in the middle of the oven around 3 hours before cooking time to heat the chamber. We then head out to our pitch for the evening, and light another fire in the middle of the oven, which we let burn for about 30 minutes. We then spread the fire to give the oven floor a final blast, before moving it to the side to give those arching flames which cook the top of the pizzas beautifully.
Our East Devon and West Devon vans use a similar process, but arrive at their pitches a little earlier for a solid hour of burning, rather than driving with the fire lit. Their British Dingley Dell Bushman oven can reach phenomenal temperatures for a really quick cook, but it does need to be tended to carefully!
As a little bonus, here are some photos of the process we use to light the fire. Some may say using a blowtorch is cheating, but we love it! Sorry for the wonky photos – my 8 week old baby needs attention and I’m short on time!
First, we build a little house of wood with briquettes to keep it stable.
Then we make a roof of kindling, and top it with briquettes. We lean kindling around it to help it all catch. There’s clear space underneath for air to feed the fire.
Now we blowtorch the S**t out of it, until it’s blazing away! Beautiful. Keep adding wood and briquettes for a nice strong fire.
And there we have it! The secrets of our fires are shared. This is only skimming the surface though, cooking with fire is an everyday learning process. Thanks for reading.