While many resources on the internet exist for finding the best woods for your pizza oven, many of these guides focus on woods that are expensive or hard to access in Australia. If you have been wondering what native or local woods you can use in your Australian wood pizza oven, here are are some of the common options.
Jarrah, Marri and other native hardwoods
Hardwoods are the gold standard for pizza ovens as they burn clean and produce a high and even temperature. These woods tend to be more challenging to find in a burnable state as they are often part of a national park and often get used for high value options such as furniture rather than being available for domestic burns. (The grown trees can take centuries to reach full height so are only farmed in limited quantities.)
The best way to find hardwoods is to find naturally dropped wood (such as fallen branches) on a friend's rural property, enquire at timber mills about buying offcuts or look for recycled timbers in burnable condition for sale in the classifieds. Make sure that any wood you find is dry and has not been treated, painted or sprayed with insecticides as these will come out when burnt and may make your pizza less than pleasant to taste!
Eucalypts and gums
Eucalypt and gums can also be good fire wood and tends to be easy to access as the trees are extremely common and regularly drop large branches. As the trees are fast growing they are also commonly used in plantation farming. In the rawest state this wood is often very moist and depending on the species can also be full of sap.
Wood that is extremely moist and full of sap generates a lot of smoke which can be unpleasant for the person stoking the fire as well as leaving a distinct and not enjoyable smell on the pizzas. Give the eucalypt wood at least a month to dry out before using in your pizza oven.
When looking for wood to burn for a pizza oven you want dry wood, without any treatments (such as insect sprays, paints of varnishing) and that has low levels of sap. As the pizza oven runs extremely hot there is little taste effect from the wood you use so the main purpose of the wood is to provide a high and even temperature to cook your tasty pizzas.
Share25 January 2016
Hello. My name is Tina and this is my home improvement blog. The bathroom is one of the most important rooms in the house. My mother used to always say that you could discover a lot about a person by how clean their bathroom was. Because of this advice, I have always been very worried about the state of my bathroom. Last year, I was convinced that the bathroom was too old and grubby so I contacted a team of contractors who came out to work on it. They re-tiled the place and installed a new sink and splashback. I really love me new bathroom and I hope you like my new blog.
