Cooking with wood in a pizza oven is an experience like no other. Building your fire to hit 500ºc, watching that cheese bubble, hearing the unique sizzling sound and smelling an incredible, freshly cooked pizza as it comes out of the wood fired oven.
But your wood-fired oven is only as good as the wood you put in it, so make sure you have the right fuel for your appliance!
The Love Logs team are proud owners of twelve different wood fired pizza ovens, so we know what we're talking about when it comes to the best wood to use in your pizza oven.
What type of wood is best for pizza ovens
With the exception of ovens powered by wood pellets, you should only ever use hardwood in your wood fired pizza oven.
Hardwood burns hotter than softwood, so it will get your oven up to temperature much quicker, and it will burn for longer so you can make more pizza!
Due to the high sap content in softwood, it smells horrible and can actually impart a pretty unpleasant flavour on your food - not what you want when you're trying to host a pizza party!
Lastly, hardwood burns ‘cleaner’ than softwood meaning it emits less smoke and soot than softwood, so you won't be brushing the ash off your pizza before you can eat it!
What species of wood should I use in my pizza oven?
We've tested most species of hardwood and found that for bigger pizza ovens which take larger logs, ash and beech are best as they light easily, burn red hot and leave a great bed of embers.
When you're using smaller logs or hardwood kindling, the species doesn't make much difference as long as it's hardwood! Oak, ash, beech and birch all work brilliantly as long as they're dry enough.
If the wood is dried to less than 20% moisture content and cut to the right size and thickness for your oven, you can easily start a fire that gets your oven hot enough to cook pizzas!
What size wood do I need for my pizza oven?
With so many different models out there, it can be hard to know which wood you need to buy for your pizza oven. The first question to answer is whether your pizza oven needs pizza logs, thicker logs, kindling, pellets or even a mix of two or three?
We've done the hard work and created fuel kits for most brands of wood-fired pizza oven, just find your brand and model below.
Wood for Most Popular Pizza Ovens
Wood for Other Pizza Oven Models
Suitable for Ooni Karu 12, Skillcraft Myti, Fresh Grills
Suitable for Ooni 3, Ooni Fyra, Burnhard Nero, Fresh Grills
Suitable for Clementi (all models), Igneus Classico, Skillcraft Inferno
Can't find your pizza oven in the list?
If you still aren't sure which pizza oven wood to buy, just send us an email on info@love-logs.com and we'll do our best to help!
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