cooking at 300-400

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: cooking at 300-400

Hi Darren,

It's easy to regulate oven temps for active fire cooking, and the results can be spectacular. As long as your oven is large enough (mine is a 39" pompeii) you will be able to create very predictable, consistent heat zones within your oven. Make a moderate fire on the side and simply add slightly smaller wood chunks as needed to keep it steady. You will find you can maintain temps anywhere from 350F to 500F as long as you want. I'm sure every oven behaves differently but in my oven there is a sweet spot 2/3 the way across the floor. Of course, a little closer to the fire gives that char much like a BBQ if needed.

I now prefer to cook with an active fire and the quality of heat makes for a very satisfying end product. I believe it is because the dome acts as a giant infrared radiator, and cooks the food differently than the hot air of a gas oven that cycles on and off. I don't have any real food pics, but here's a pic of what the fire looks like - these are chicken pot pies that were finished at 425F.

I recently saw a food channel episode that featured high-end restaurants that prepare wood-fired oven and grill dishes exclusively. According to the newspaper, there is currently an explosion of such restaurants here in Orange County. Here are two articles on this style of cooking:

Experience The Fire with Acclaimed Chef Noah Blom of ARC Food & Libations - Locale Magazine

Recipe: Mediterranean Braised Chicken with Meyer Lemon and Fennel - San Jose Mercury News

John

[Tonyp]

Re: cooking at 300-400

I don't have a whole lot of experience yet but have cooked with both the residual heat for several days after a pizza night, as well as just lighting a small fire for a little while and roasting some game hens while the fire was dying down. So you can cook use the oven in other ways. Couple days ago we lit a fire to build up a small bed of coals to grill some burgers over.

Maybe with practice you could learn how long and large a fire would be needed to reach say 400 after removing the coals and allowing the oven time to reach equilibrium? I think the challenge would be figuring out how hot the inner brick face needs to be and for how long so that when it equalizes you are at your target temperature.

[Tscarborough]

Re: cooking at 300-400

Yes, you heat it to full saturation, then ride the heat curve down. This may mean that you cook pizza on day one, bread day 2, and meat/vegetables on day three, if you want. You could also leave the door open and cool it down faster.

[darren71]

I am new to this forum. I have started building my oven. so I have been thinking of all kinds of questions. I have spent hours surfing the net for different recipes and how to cook in the oven. The one thing I haven't found an answer to is starting a fire to cook at 350 or just lower temperatures. A lot of the recipes I have found are calling for cooking in the oven at lower temps than you would use for cooking pizza. So my question is. Do you heat the oven all the way up to turn the dome white ( 800 - 900 deg) and let it cool down before cooking or do you just heat the oven to the temp you want to cook at ( 300-400 deg)? Any advice would be great.

Thank you,
Darren