Which wood is best for the pizza oven?

If you want to make real pizza, as it tastes in Italy and in better pizza restaurants, then you have to bake it in a wood-fired pizza oven. Only then can you get such a high temperature that the pizza base becomes crispy, at the same time as the cheese and topping are perfectly cooked.

Most Swedes have experience of burning wood. We like to light a fire to curl up in front of during cold winter days, and we have no difficulty making a fire in the woods to grill some sausages. But when you fire in a wood oven, does it require a special type of wood or is it okay to just take what you have at home?

“In a pizza oven, it is important to fire with wood that has a high calorific value. The calorific value of a type of wood indicates how much energy, ie heat, you get out of a kilo of wood ”

In a pizza oven, it is important to get as high a temperature as possible. Therefore, it is important to fire with wood that has a high calorific value. The calorific value of a type of wood indicates how much energy, ie heat, you get out of a kilo of wood. Among our Swedish wood species, deciduous trees such as beech, maple, oak, rowan and ash have the highest calorific values ​​and thus give the highest temperatures.

However, our most common wood species for wood, birch, also has a relatively high calorific value and works well in a smaller pizza oven like Faster Greta. If you want to bake your pizza on a stone over an open fire, for example in our fireplace Lillhälla, we actually recommend birch wood as a first choice, as it gives a very beautiful fire with bluish flames, which also smells very good.

Avoid firewood from conifers when cooking

Firewood from conifers, such as spruce and pine, provides quite a bit of heat per kilogram of firewood. In addition, these types of wood scatter sparks, so if you are going to fire with conifers, you should do so with a closed door in a tiled stove or stove with a door. To top it off, there is a lot of tar in firewood from conifers, which can give an unpleasant aftertaste to the cooked food. Therefore, avoid firewood from conifers when firing in a pizza oven.

It is important that the wood is dry

The higher the humidity in the wood, the more difficult it is to get the heat up in the oven. Moist wood also emits significantly more smoke than dry wood, as well as tar vapors that can be directly harmful to inhale and which can also settle in the flues. Always make sure that the wood is dry enough before you fire it in the pizza oven. If you are unsure of the humidity, measure with a humidity meter. The wood must have a moisture content of less than 18%.