Introduction: What is Wood Fired Pizza and Why is it Different?

Wood fired pizza is a type of pizza that is cooked in a wood fired oven. It was first introduced in Naples, Italy and has become very popular in the United States, and across the world.

Wood fired pizza is different from other types of pizzas because it is cooked at a much higher temperature – at least 400°C or 752°F, and often even hotter again.

True Neapolitan pizza is meant to be cooked in 1 minute, and you need move the pizza around regularly during the cook time so that your pizza is evenly cooked.

This helps to create the wood smoked flavour profile and texture of the dough, sauce and toppings.

The taste of the wood smoke is very distinctive and unique. Many people believe it is the most authentic way to enjoy pizza. 

Wood fired pizza certainly has a crispier crust and the toppings are usually cooked for less time than other types of pizza.

How do I Cook Wood Fired Pizza?

Wood fired ovens are usually more expensive than a regular oven but they really are worth it if you want to make great pizzas at home.

Bighorn or Ooni have a number of very reasonably priced options, although other options are available.

You can still make great tasting pizza in a conventional oven, although you obviously won’t get the wood fired taste.

You can get round this to some extent by adding wood chips to the bottom of your oven in an aluminium tray.

Soak the chips for an hour or two in some water. Just before you put them in the oven, drain them and keep some of the liquid you soaked them in.

Then put your wood chips in an aluminium tray with a little of the soaking liquid, and place at the bottom of your oven.

Soaking them stops them catching fire in the oven, and this little hack will help you get some smoke in to your pizzas.

Another option we like is to smoke your pizza on the barbecue with the lid down or your smoker grill. That way you get a really good wood smoke flavour into your pizza, although it will take longer than a wood fired oven which is much hotter.

We are going to take you through the process of making wood fired pizza at home step by step. 

How do I Make Wood Fired Pizza Dough?

Ingredients for Neapolitan Style Wood Fired Pizza Dough

1 kg Tipo 00 Flour

250g Semolina Flour

30g Fine Sea Salt

5 Teaspoons of Sugar

600ml Lukewarm Water

10g Yeast

60ml Olive Oil

Wood Fired Pizza with Rocket, Olives and Tomatoes

We want a high gluten and high protein dough for best results. 

Gluten takes a while to develop so leaving your dough to prove for 2-3 days will ensure a high gluten content. 12-24 hours is fine, but 2-3 days in the fridge for a cold prove will always be better.

You can always make it on Wednesday or Thursday to use on Saturday night. It’s not at all difficult and pretty fast to throw together.

This will make around 10 11” Pizzas.

Method for Perfect Wood Fired Pizza Dough

To make the dough, we need to mix together our flours and yeast in a large mixing bowl – 250g of Semolina Flour to 1kg of Tipo 00 Flour plus 30g of Fine Sea Salt. 

1. Mix the 1kg Tipo 00 flour, 250g of semolina and 30g salt in a large mixing bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, mix the lukewarm water with 10g of dried yeast and 5 teaspoons of sugar and mix well.

3. Add the two bowls together – wet and dry ingredients and mix well. 

4. Depending on how your flour has reacted to the wet ingredients, you may need to add a touch more water if it is too dry and won’t come together, or a touch more flour if the dough is too wet.

5. Knead the dough by hand for approximately 5-10 minutes until you have a smooth dough ball.

6. Put the dough back into the bowl, trickle over a little olive oil, add a small handful of flour to the top of your dough, and then cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge. 

The longer you leave your dough, the easier it will be to stretch out and the better the end result. 2-3 days is optimal.

How Do I Make the Sauce for Wood Fired Pizza?

Ingredients For Homemade Pizza Sauce

2 Tins of Peeled Plum Tomatoes

1 Tablespoon of Garlic Powder

1 Tablespoon of Onion Powder

1 Teaspoon of Dried Oregano

1 Teaspoon of Sugar

1 Teaspoon of Fine Sea Salt

1 Teaspoon of Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Place all the ingredients in a blender (we like to use the Nutri-bullet for smoothness) and blend until you have a smooth paste.

Now you are ready to roll out your dough.

Rolling out Wood Fired Pizza Dough

For each pizza you roll out you need a dough ball which is roughly the size of the palm of your hand. We want to roll our pizza out thinly so that it will cook quickly in the Neapolitan style, in the wood fired oven.

Your pizza dough should have risen quite a lot in the bowl in the fridge. Take it out of the fridge for around 30 minutes to come up to room temperature before you roll it out.

Tear off a piece of dough roughly the size of your palm, and place it on a flat surface with some semolina or Tipo 00 flour. 

Press your hands onto the dough and knead it for a few minutes.

Now use a rolling pin to roll the dough out evenly and thinly until you have a 11 inch round pizza base. 

You have probably seen pizza makers spin the dough around and catch it on the back of their hands. While it’s an entertaining thing to watch, it’s also useful in helping to form a crust, and shape your pizza base.

Try to pass the dough between your two hands and then throw it up and catch it on the back of your knuckles, if you can. 

When you catch the dough on the back of your hand it means that the dough is stretching out from the middle as it hangs down around the sides. This helps to shape it.

Now you can add your tomato sauce to the top of your base. 

Now you can add mozzarella cheese and any other toppings for your wood fired pizza. 

The best way to experiment with your first wood fired pizza is to make a margarita to keep things simple. 

If you feel confident you could try pepperoni, goat’s cheese and red onion, or another classic combination. 

It’s really important at this point to put semolina flour on the base of your pizza, and on the paddle that you are using to place the pizza in the oven. Otherwise the base will definitely stick which can be disastrous!

How Do I Cook My Wood Fired Pizza?

You will need to put your pizza stone in your wood fired oven for a few minutes before you use it, so that it comes up to temperature.

The heat of your pizza stone will cook the base of your pizza so it needs to be hot. 

The classic wood to use for wood fired pizza is oak, but you may wish to put a little apple or cherry wood in there for a subtle, mild and fruitier smoke flavour.

Your oven should be up to at least 400°C or 752°F. 

Use a paddle to transport your pizza to the oven, these are cheap and really useful. They also make sure your hands are nowhere near the fierce heat of the oven.

Keep your pizza on the paddle for a few seconds to get a decent blast of heat. The last thing we want is for the pizza to stick to the paddle as we are trying to set it on to the pizza stone. 

Gently shake your pizza off the paddle onto the hot pizza stone. The crust will rise quickly at the front of the pizza, make sure not to let it burn.

At this high heat we will need to turn the pizza every few seconds, to make sure it cooks evenly. You need to watch the pizza constantly to make sure it doesn’t catch fire or char too much.

Keep your pizza away from open flames and burning wood.

Take care to turn the pizza through 360° for a minute or so until the base and cheese are cooked evenly.

As with every art form practice makes perfect. 

If you would like to read the full blog entry, feel free to visit this address:

https://bbqsmokergrill.org/wood-fired-pizza/