The best firewood for a wood-fired oven is: the vine shoot, thin holm oak, olive tree, oak or chesnut tree. We always look for materials that offer high calorific power so you will get a bigger combustion flame and the oven will be full of temperature.
Fire lighting
To start lighting/ignition, you should use paper instead of ignition pills. Leave open the upper draught and the door’s hatch. When the fire inside is stronger, you will close the door’s hatch gradually without extinguishing the inner fire, leaving it at approximately 50%.
For example: A 90cm oven: if you turn it on at 11:00h, it will be ready for use at about 12:30h and it will have reached a temperature of 250-300ºC. Once the wood has been consumed and there is no flame inside, close the door’s hatch and the upper draught of the smoke outlet. We control the temperature by means of the draught and, if necessary, opening the door (if we need to lower the temperature faster). At this point, we introduce the foods that we want to cook: meats, fish, stews…
These ovens admit everything. Temperature and baking time depend on the nature and quantity of the product or the type of recipe. If the temperature drops below the right level, we will introduce a small load of firewood to raise it again.
Temperature utilization
When we roast in the wood-fired oven at high temperature and we have already finished baking, we must be sure that coals/embers are completely extinguished before cleaning inside. Once we have removed them and the oven is clean, we can start to cook bread, pastries, pies, cupcakes, muffins… At that time, the temperature will be about 200-250ºC depending on the time of the year and whether it is indoors or outdoors.
We will be able to cook as many dishes as we want until the oven is at about 130ºC.
Low temperature cooking
Cooking at low temperature is in fashion. We see it in more and more places not just in restaurants. Low-temperature cooking is a great way to get the best taste, texture and nutritional properties out of your dishes. We talk about low-temperature cooking when we cook at less than 100ºC.
We can leave a pout with a stew or “fabada” (bean stew) cooking in the oven overnight and it will be delicious from the first hour in the morning.
It’s recommended that, once its use is finished and it’s cold, remove the ash from the inside and leave it clean for the next use. In this way, no aromas of wood, embers, etc… will be impregnated on the walls of the oven.
