Controlling the Temperature in Your Brick Oven

There are several tips and techniques you can use to control the temperature of your brick oven. Which ones work for different food and when to make appropriate changes will come the more you practice on your wood-fired brick oven.

How Hot Does My Brick Oven Get?

At its hottest, a wood-fired brick oven will reach temperatures of 750 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. This will cook a beautifully thin, crispy-crust pizza in about 90 seconds. If all we made were thin-crust pizzas, our article would be done. But assuming you want to cook other items, we will look at different ways to cool the cooking surface of your oven.

Open the Door

Some may consider this idea sacrilegious while others believe it to be necessary. If you need to cool an oven quickly, opening the door is one of the best ways to do it. Perhaps you need to go from browning to simmering heat. Opening the door is a great way to do that.

Adjust the Fire

Just like when you are cooking on a grill, you can move the fire so it is not as close to the food being cooked. This is a good way to get your brick oven ready for a sear on a roast. This can also bring the temperature up if you would prefer to do that.

Move the Food

No, this doesn’t cool down the cooking area at all. But it does help to ensure you are giving the food less direct heat. Some people are more comfortable doing this than adjusting the fire. One of the downfalls of this option is that a brick oven is designed to retain heat. The heat may be less direct, but the heat trapped in the oven will stay.

Wait

Are you in a rush to get things done? If not, then just wait. Once an oven hits its peak heat, it will take about an hour to get down to 550 degrees. If you need it cooler than that, then wait longer. If time is of the essence, then this option may not work out well for you. But if time is important, you may want to stick with your electric or gas oven, just don’t expect the food to come out as good.

2 thoughts on “Controlling the Temperature in Your Brick Oven”

  1. I would like to know if baking french bread in a brick or wooden fired oven will achieve the same results and look like a commercial electrical oven?

  2. Hi Vincent. There’s more than one answer to your question. From my experience, french bread is more about the ingredients and technique than the baking. Saying that, a brick oven will heat from all sides so the result is much like a conventional oven–it just requires a little more effort to control the heat. Bread from a brick oven will usually exhibit more of an artisanal appearance, so if you are looking for commercial french bread then you may be more satisfied with a conventionally standardized commercial product. But if you relish the experience of creating your own cooking and baking resources, then I recommend a Round Grove Products brick oven. Our best wishes to you–I actually want to create a French Bread video now to see how it looks!

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