The beauty of a well-designed wood-fired oven is its versatility and the ability to utilize one appliance for a full complement of cooking styles such as roasting, braising, grilling, baking and of course authentic Neapolitan pizza. Although the actual cooking techniques vary with each style, you always start by burning wood to coals to saturate the oven’s floor and overhead dome with heat.

The Bake Oven Technique

The Bake Oven Technique is hearth baking using only the retained heat stored deep within the oven’s floor and overhead dome (no live flame or coal bed). This is a simple process of firing, regulating, and cleaning. Following these steps you will yield results equal to the old world bakers and their brick ovens.

Firing the oven

Start by preparing a fire in your usual manner. At La Cucina Mugnaini we use 3 Weber Firestarters™, 2 handfuls of kindling, and 2 small hardwood logs.

1. Light the Firestarters™, which will in turn ignite the kindling and hardwood. Let the fire get established to the point where the kindling has burned to embers and the hardwood is fully burning. Add more kindling if necessary.

2. Knock the embers down spreading them evenly around the perimeter of the oven floor. Next, add a generous amount of kindling and distribute logs around the perimeter of the oven floor. If a fire does not start immediately, use more Firestarters™ to ignite.

NOTE: The goal is to bring the oven up to temperature and have all of the wood burn to embers at the same time. Each oven is different so practice and experiment to determine the length of time and the amount of wood required to thoroughly heat your oven. Be careful not to add too much wood at one time, causing the oven to over fire and sending flames up the flue.

A good staring point is as follows:

• 2-3 logs for a Piccolo
• 3-4 logs for a Medio or a Prima 100
• 4-5 logs for a Prima 120

3. At this point the oven door should be removed to allow enough oxygen to reach the fire. All of the wood should be ignited and the entire dome engulfed in flames. Allow the wood to burn to coals and observe the dome temperature. A properly fired bake oven will have a dome void of any black carbon buildup and have a substantial coal bed of hot glowing embers regardless of how much wood you use. If the dome has not turned ashen white, or there are cold spots evidenced by black carbon buildup, add more wood and/or adjust placement of the wood to again saturate the dome with flame. You should expect to complete the perimeter burn twice.

NOTE: If you are starting with a very cold oven or using unseasoned wood you may need to repeat the firing process. A handy trick is to start a small fire in your oven the day before as a quick preheat. Remember the goal is to have all of the wood burn down to coals at the same time so reposition or knock down slower burning logs. Plan on 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours for this heat up process depending on the size of your oven and the nature of your wood. The longer the firing process the deeper the heat in the oven.

Regulating the oven

The next step is to regulate the heat in the oven using the red-hot coals and closing the oven door to evenly distribute the heat.

1. After the flames have died down use your utility peel to spread the coals evenly over the oven floor, placing more towards the oven foreground near the mouth and less towards the rear third. With experience you will learn where to place the coals so the oven floor heats evenly. Next place the door in position to fully close the oven and let the oven regulate to the desired temperature. In about one hour the coals will have burned down to ash and the heat within the oven will be very evenly distributed. Expect the heat differential between the oven’s floor and internal dome to be approximately 50 degrees. This is consistently achieved as a result of the well-balanced thermal mass of the Mugnaini ovens.

NOTE: At this point you can either maintain the heat in the oven by leaving coals in place and keeping the door on, or remove the coals and leave door off to rapidly lower the temperature. This decision is based upon the readiness of the bread to be baked.

1. Measure the oven floor temperature with an infrared thermometer gun to determine oven readiness for baking. Look for an average temperature. A variance of 25 degrees will not affect the bake. With the door in place you can expect a steady decrease in temperature of 25-50 degrees an hour. You will need to make a decision as to the readiness of your dough in relation to the desired temperature of the oven.

a. To lower the temperature, remove the door and use your peel to shovel the coals into a metal container with lid. Be careful as coals that may look extinguished can come back to life after exposed to air. Leave the door off to more rapidly lower the temperature. Always be sure to replace the oven door and allow 10 minutes for regulating the oven (before checking the temperature again) in order to obtain an accurate oven temperature reading. It is the deep heat within the oven that accounts for the temperature rise during regulation and will always increase after the door is put in place.

b. To maintain the temperature, simply leave the door in place until the last step. The high heat inside your Mugnaini oven may drop rapidly at the start of regulating but will maintain 500-600 degrees for hours. If you think you need to add more wood refer to Firing the Oven Step 1 and start over.

Preparing the floor

To prepare the oven floor for bread the coals will need to be removed and the oven floor cleaned.

1. Remove the door and shovel the exhausted coals into a metal container with a lid (be sure to wear protective gloves and place the can in a safe open area on a noncombustible floor). Use an ash vacuum or oven floor brush to clean the oven floor.

2. Damp mop the floor using a cotton mop or rag (cotton only). Rinse, ring out the mop, and repeat until the floor is cleaned. This is easily achieved with two passes, there is no need to scrub; the goal is only to pick up any remaining ash. Replace the oven door and allow the oven a couple of minutes to regulate again.

Bake temperature

Standard gas or electric ovens use the average air temperature inside the oven to regulate the heat. A wood-fired oven is best judged by using a thermometer to measure the temperature on the oven floor. Ideal temperatures range from 450-520°F. The ambient air temperature will be lower so you will need to adjust your recipes accordingly. Typically a wood-fired oven floor should read 75-100 degrees hotter than your recipe calls for. For example, if a recipe calls for an oven temperature of 350°F, try baking at 425°F in your wood-fired oven and expect about a 20 percent faster bake time.

Bread placement

Use a floured wooden peel to deliver your loaves to the oven floor. If you need to relocate your bread, let the dough set for a few seconds before moving to avoid tearing the bottom. Bread bakes more evenly when the oven is full of loaves, however even a few loaves will bake fine. Breads will brown quicker near the oven walls but can be moved during the baking process. Open the oven door to check the color and move if necessary. The best technique is to leave the bread in the same place or rotate the loaves together. If you move a loaf to a new spot on the floor, that area will be slightly hotter.

Steam injection

Although not essential for the oven to bake properly, you may wish to add steam for a particular recipe. There are two established methods of adding steam to a wood-fired oven.

1. The garden sprayer (weed sprayer): Available from hardware stores, the best ones to use will have a pump and adjustable nozzle. Fill the sprayer with water and pump to a high pressure, using the fine mist setting. Immediately after placing bread loaves onto oven floor, spray the inside of the oven dome with the fine mist and quickly close the door. Avoid spraying into any areas that have ash buildup (for example, around the flue) as the ash will fall down onto the bread. Be careful to test the mist setting before using in the oven because a blast of cold water sprayed directly onto the hot oven may cause a thermal shock and subsequent cracking. A strong blast of fine mist is ideal.

2. The cast iron radiator: A deep cast iron pot is another adaptation that works well. Place the pot on the oven floor to heat during the regulating process. After setting bread loaves onto the oven floor, carefully pour hot water into the pot and immediately close oven door. Avoid spilling water onto oven floor, which may cause thermal shock and cracking.

Judging when bread is done

One of the beauties of the wood-fired oven is that you can open the door at any time to inspect your loaves and not worry about loosing too much heat from the oven. Unlike your gas or electric oven, the deep heat within your wood-fired oven draws from a reservoir of thermal mass that replaces any lost heat within minutes.

To judge whether your bread is done use the following criteria:

1. Length of bake: In general a one pound loaf should take 45 minutes. If the loaf bakes too quickly you may have good color on the crust but will not have baked out enough moisture from the interior of the loaf. This results in a soft crust when the bread cools. However, keep in mind that the smaller the loaf the quicker the bake.

2. Color of crust: The crust should be a golden brown. If the bottom of the bread is browning too quickly place the loaf on a half sheet pan to protect the bottom.

3. Internal temperature: To remove any guesswork, use a probe instant read thermometer and measure the internal temperature of the loaf. The thermometer should read 200-205°F or 93-96°C.

NOTE: If the oven is too hot, the color comes early but your probe will read too cool. If the oven is too cool you lose the oven spring and the loaf won’t open, as it should. This results in a tighter crumb. If the bread bakes for too long the crust will be too thick.