Pizza only??? What happened to the versatility of wood fired cooking??

[kjramkunwar]

Good Evening to all the firefolks here.

I am Kiran Patil from Jalgaon district in the northern part of Maharashtra state in peninsular part of India.

Quickly coming to the point -

An anecdotal, back of the envelope estimate that I did on the posts I have been reading here for over a year now, has guided me to a conclusion, that a wood fired dome oven is about baking a quick pizza for about 85-90% of the discussion topics.

I'm sure a woodfired oven isn't all about a single cuisine. How exactly did the dome oven became synonyms with a pizza oven??

Or are my estimates way too off???

[SableSprings]

Welcome to the forum community. Although most oven builds start off as "pizza ovens", most of us do use our ovens for much more than just pizza. I think the phrase pizza oven is most often used simply because, unless you have one, people associate the Pompeii/Napolino style shaped oven with the pizza they order at a restaurant. I use my masonry oven primarily for baking bread, but if I say I'm using my bread oven...people don't visualize what my oven looks like. I'm pretty sure if you love to bake, having a pizza oven does not mean you won't be using it for baking bread, stews, cookies, roasting meat & vegetables, and even as a dehydrator.

I think whatever term you use, it simply reflects your perception of the oven's primary purpose. Of course, this is all just my opinion...

[kjramkunwar]

Thank you so much for the clarification.

Considering the human history with fire and food, pizza is a much recent thing... Much later than the invention of agriculture and grains and breads.

There is a much longer history of humans with food and fire.

The earliest 'cooked ' food humans ever invented would most probably be a roasted squash, eggplant , pumpkin or some similar fruit...and meat.. as meat would require much more efforts to source.

[JRPizza]

Well, our gracious hosts, FORNO BRAVO are, according to their website, " The World’s Leader in Wood Fired Pizza Ovens, DIY Plans & Accessories.",

Have you checked out the "Brick Oven Cooking" section of the forum - a whole lot of cooking going on and most of it isn't pizza. With the firing and heat retention characteristics of a wood fired oven, you typically have to get the interior very hot to saturate the thermal mass, then after a cooling period you can bake/roast a variety of foods. Quite a few of us take advantage of the very high heating period to make pizzas for dinner, then use the retained heat to cook. At our house pizza is not the majority of food that comes out of our oven.