Pizza! The simple concept of a crispy crust topped with sauce, cheese and anything you can imagine is irresistible to many people. Dedicated pizza lovers know that no standard kitchen oven can match the taste of a crust prepared in a wood fire oven.
Owning a pizza oven is a sure way to elevate your pizza game but with the use of a live fire, it’s important to know exactly how to work your oven safely and understand how to problem solve frequently encountered issues.
The most common reason for a pizza oven to smoke a lot is the use of an incorrect wood type as well as wood that hasn’t been properly treated or is too wet. Other common causes for smokey pizza ovens are an inadequate chimney size or a case of overloading the chamber with wood.
Learning how to operate an oven that uses a live fire can be quite stressful, especially if your oven starts producing thick, bitter smoke. That’s why we are here to help you understand your pizza oven a little better. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes much less intimidating.
Can I Stop My Pizza Oven From Smoking?
Your pizza oven is likely smoking through an error you’re making which can be very easily fixed!
The easiest mistakes you can make when using your pizza oven are related to the wood you use. You want to only use wood that is completely dry.
To ensure that you’re never using wet wood you can put your logs into your oven after each use (once the fire has been fully put out, all you need is the residual heat) and leave them to kiln dry.
The best wood to use for your pizza oven is a hardwood that has already been seasoned such as oak, maple, ash, beech. Wood with resin, such as cedar or pine, also causes a lot of smoke when the resin burns off so avoid using it. You also want to use smooth wood without any bark on it.
Once you have the right type of dry wood you can practice setting a fire that burns evenly and fits in your oven without overfilling it. Remember that oxygen flow is very important to a good, steady fire so you don’t want to use an excessive amount of wood.
The other issues that can cause a smokey pizza oven are related to the design of the oven. This shouldn’t be a big problem for those with an oven from a trusted brand but some ovens might not have a good flow of oxygen. This can mean that the flue from which the smoke escapes is too small.
You also want to make sure to cure your oven to get rid of any factory coatings before you can use it to its full extent. To do this you make progressively larger fires over a five-day period. This allows for the oven to get as hot as you want it without smoking.
Regularly cleaning your oven prevents the possibility of smoke occurring from burnt food bits.
How Do You Take Care of a Pizza Oven?
To care for your pizza oven and prevent any unnecessary smoking you need to properly clean your oven, preferably after each use.
Once your oven is completely cool after using it (wait until the next day) you should remove the ash and any wood remnants using a rake and a fireplace shovel.
You can then clean any baked-on grease with water and vinegar. Use very little water and never use any soaps or solvents to clean your oven because it could crack the stone.
If you use your oven at the correct temperatures then there shouldn’t be any soot in the chamber and any grease should bake-off on its own at the high temperatures. You should regularly sweep the flue of your pizza oven to prevent the build-up of soot.
Use only brass or copper brushes to clean ash out of your oven as other metals can damage the stone.
Is Smoke Produced in Both Wood-Fired and Gas Pizza Ovens?
Unlike a wood-fire pizza oven, a gas pizza oven does not require a live fire and therefore doesn’t come with all the issues that come with choosing wood and controlling the temperature manually.
However, there will still be some smoke. This occurs naturally as dough and its toppings caramelized and it happens no matter what kind of oven you are using.
While a gas oven produces less smoke and doesn’t require the hassle of storing and kiln drying wood, it uses gas, a fossil fuel, and is ultimately not the best option for the environment with the release of carbon dioxide.
Is a Gas Pizza Oven Better Than a Wood-Fired One?
The most obvious advantage to a gas oven is that it completely removes the hassle of having to start and maintain your own fire. With a gas oven, all the previous issues I mentioned that cause your pizza to smoke are rendered irrelevant.
A gas pizza oven has a stationary flame that you don’t really need to worry about at all. You just turn the oven on, let it heat up and throw your pizza in once the temperature is high enough. Then you just turn it back off without any worry about properly putting out a fire.
The other plus side to this easy process is that a gas oven requires much less clean-up. In a gas oven there’s no ash or wood remnants and no need for brushes or shovels.
The biggest issue of a gas pizza oven is that to get it to such high temperatures you need to use a lot of fuel. You can use natural gas but that’s not always easily available.
Propane is not only harmful to the environment but it also isn’t cheap and propane prices often rise. A wood fire oven probably ends up being cheaper to maintain if you plan to use it frequently.
The truth is that there is really no difference in how quickly the pizza cooks in a gas oven vs a wood fire pizza oven. The flavor is also pretty much unchanged between the two.
This means that the ease of a gas fire oven might appeal to some people while others might continue to love the authenticity that comes with a wood fire pizza oven.
The best option is the one that appeals the most to you!