Choosing the ideal wood for your pizza oven may make a significant difference to the taste, texture, and cooking speed of your pizzas.
While there’s plenty of advice on smoking woods out there, many people don’t pay enough attention to the wood they use for cooking pizza.
In this guide, we tell you everything you need to know to choose the best wood for your pizza oven.
What You Need
You need a very hot oven to cook pizza.
This alone is the main reason for carefully choosing specific firewood for your pizza oven.
Only dense, dry hardwood can provide the kind of heat that you’ll need to cook your pizza to perfection.
Best Overall: Seasoned and kiln-dried hardwoods
Cooking over a wood fire is one of the oldest traditions.
It gives a delectable, mouthwatering taste that isn’t replicated in the oven, microwave, stove, or even with charcoal fires.
You can cook almost anything over a wood fire, from steaks and pork chops to burgers, hot dogs, fish and veggies.
Seasoned firewood has been prepared by being cut, chopped, and piled to allow it to dry. This generally takes a year to complete. It can reduce the moisture content of wood from 50% to 20-30 percent when done properly.
Kiln-dried cooking wood, on the other hand, is preferable to seasoned cooking wood because it has fewer drawbacks: it dries faster and better, kills insects and potential fungus / mold in the wood.
Best Wood Species for Cooking Pizza
Oak
Oak is a highly heavy and dense wood that is ideal for use in pizza ovens since they need to endure high temperatures.
Oak wood is commonly available and burns hot, imparting a clean, earthy flavor.
If you go with red oak instead of white oak, you’ll notice a stronger taste and greater smoke output.
Maple
Another excellent option for your pizza oven is maple. It may be burned alone or in combination with oak or applewood.
Maple has a mild, subtly sweet flavor that compliments a wide range of toppings, such as pork, chicken, and most vegetables.
Apple
Apple is wonderful in pizza ovens since it generates a high amount of heat and adds to the taste of your meal.
It’s also a great wood for smoking meat for an extended period of time due to its mildness.
Hickory
Hickory is for the cooks who like to add a bold kick of flavor.
Whether grilling or smoking, hickory will lend its rich, distinctive profile to your steaks, ribs, chicken, fish, and more.
Our ultra-premium kiln-dried hickory burns hotter and longer than other hardwoods, so you’ll spend less time feeding the fire.
Competition chefs and BBQ teams reach for hickory time and time again.
Ash
Ash firewood is fast burning, light and very distinctive in flavor that often pairs well with fish and red meats.
Pecan
Pecan is a popular cooking wood among BQ aficionados, who claim that it has a unique flavor. That’s because the delicious smoky taste of pecan goes great with a wide range of meats, including ribs and poultry.
Concluding Thoughts
When it comes to pizza ovens, heat is the be-all and end-all, so dried and seasoned hardwoods make an excellent choice given their dense construction that gives us that long, high burn.
Making a pizza in a wood-fired oven can be an expensive, time-consuming learning curve. It would be such a shame to fall at the final hurdle, finding the best wood for your pizza oven.
While it’s not always viewed as a top priority, finding the best wood to cook your pizza is an essential step towards pizza perfection and no one does it better than Cutting Edge Firewood. Here is a link to their website.
