There's nothing quite like the crispy, crunchy taste of a pizza baked in a wood fired oven. The high temperature cooking and naturally produced heat give the pizza's dough an added flavor, while the evenness of the oven's heat bakes the cheese and toppings to perfection. Follow these steps to bake pizza in a wood fired oven.
Instructions
1. Fire up the oven. Each wood fired oven is slightly different. The heating requirements depend on the size and thickness of the oven and the composition of its walls. Do a little experimentation with your oven and then begin heating it at least 2 hours before you want to bake the pizza.
2. Make the dough. As you wait for the wood to burn and the oven to heat up, make the pizza dough as you generally make it. You can make the dough thin or thick as you stretch it into a pizza base. However, make sure that the diameter of the pizza base is small enough to fit into the oven.
3. Add toppings. Choose whatever you like, mixing and matching different flavors and fresh ingredients as you go. Just be careful not to overload the pizza base with toppings so the pizza doesn't end up too heavy.
4. Slide the peel under the unbaked pizza. A peel is a flat disk or paddle that slides underneath the pizza so you can place it in the oven without burning yourself. Gently slide the peel underneath the pizza and lift the pizza into the oven. Give the peel a quick backwards jerk to get the pizza off the peel and onto the oven's rack.
5. Watch the pizza closely. The high temperatures of wood fired ovens mean that you need to keep a careful eye on the pizza's progress so it doesn't burn. After the first 30 or 40 seconds of baking, use the peel to rotate the pizza 180 degrees so it cooks evenly. Don't be surprised if the pizza looks finished after just over a minute and a half, since the wood fired oven's temperatures cook it much faster than a regular kitchen oven.
Tags: wood fired oven, fired oven, pizza base, wood fired, bake pizza, into oven
