Enjoy Traditional Pizza: Cooking Wood-Fired Pizza in 5 Steps

Pizza is the favourite food item for almost everyone in the world. Popularly known as one of the best Italian dishes, it made its way to the western countries and gradually to Asia as well. Such is the taste that pizza has got.

The taste of pizza greatly varies in how you’re preparing it. Usually heated and baked in an oven, you can do it either in an electric oven or in a wood-fired oven. It also depends on choosing the best wood for a wood-fired oven. You should use high-quality wood to get the genuine and smoky taste of pizza.

Fortunately, if you’ve got a wood-fired oven and looking to cook pizza on your own, here’s a 6-step guide that will let you taste the goodness of traditional pizza. Let’s dive in:

1. Prepare the pizza dough
   The greatness of pizza lies in how well you’re preparing the dough. Though it’s time-consuming, the hand-made dough will enhance the taste as you freshly prepare it.
   
   First, mix the ingredients needed for dough in a soft-gooey ball and let it be kept aside for at least three hours. This time is for the dough to rise and soften.
   
   After the pizza dough has risen, you should make it into a circle of 12 or 14 inches using either by hand or rolling pin.
   
   Note: Make sure you’re not taking too much time to make the dough into a circle. Too much handling can make the dough tough. Also, it’s better if you do the circle by hand rather than with a rolling stick.
   
   
2. Heating the wood-fired oven
   This is the interesting and main part of cooking pizza. While you wait for the dough to rise, you can start heating the wood-fired oven. For this, you can use sticks to light up the fire in the centre of the oven.
   
   You should wait until all the soot is vapourised which indicates that the oven is hot enough for the pizza to cook. It should take around 90min to 3 hours depending on the oven size you have.
   
   Now, use a long metal handle to remove the soot and make the place empty in the oven. Remove the ash on the floor and refrain from wiping the floor with a damp cloth as it could reduce the temperature.
   
   If you’re wondering what you can cook in the wood-fired oven, you can use it for cooking veggies, baking fish, slow cooking meat, getting smoky and barbeque meat, etc.
   
   
3. Topping the pizza
   After rolling the dough into a desirable size, you should start adding the toppings on top of it. While doing so, resist adding too many toppings as it could weigh down the pizza and lead to uneven cooking.
   
   Classic Margherita toppings include tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. If you want any other toppings, add them in limited quantities.
   
   
4. Placing your wood-fired oven
   The most important step is placing the topped pizza in the oven. Use the pizza peel to place it in the preheated oven. Before this, you can dust the peel with flour as it helps in easy transferring to the oven from the peel.
   
   After placing, you can see the pizza base rising and cooking within seconds. And the whole pizza is cooked in around 90 seconds when you cook in the traditional wood-fired oven. This is due to the already heated oven which aids in the perfect cooking of pizza. It’s also the main reason why you should avoid placing the pizza in a cold oven as it leads to soggy-based pizza.
   
   
5. Slicing and serving your pie
   After the pizza is cooked, remove it with pizza peel and take it outside. Now slice the pizza and enjoy the classic and decadent taste of pizza, all prepared by you and at your home.

Conclusion

One of the benefits of a wood-fired pizza is you can enjoy its traditional and authentic taste every time you make it to your home. You can also make it as a pizza party and share the pizza goodness with all your loved ones.