You can’t have delicious wood-fired pizza without top-quality wood. But premium pizza wood for portable ovens is hard to find. That’s why we design our wood to fit easily in popular ovens like the Ooni Karu and Gozney Roccbox. This means you can cook with real wood instead of charcoal, gas, or pellets. Plus, the oak wood comes kiln-dried for the cleanest burns and subtle, smoky flavor.
Every Hot Box contains about 350 cubic inches of kiln-dried wood. That’s enough wood to make 20 delicious wood-fired pizzas! Each thin piece of wood is cut to six inches in length, making it extremely easy to slide into the mouth of your tiny oven.
The kiln-dried wood is also simple to ignite and burns incredibly hot. Because of this, it only takes six pieces of wood to heat your oven to 750-900 degrees. By adding one piece per minute, you’ll ensure a consistent heat perfect for a 60-second wood-fired pizza.
What makes Hot Box the best wood for your pizza oven? You won’t believe how many sweltering perks come in such a small package.
Size matters, especially when it comes to pizza wood! Say goodbye to struggling to jam a large log into a small hole.
Nothing performs quite like kiln-dried wood. It comes easy to start, efficient to burn and completely free of pests and mold.
The wood itself is 100% hardwood oak. Top chefs around the country use this type of wood to make their wood-fired pizzas.
Hot Box is committed to protecting our environment. We sustainably source all our wood and plant one tree for every box sold.
Since it’s kiln-dried and pest-free, Hot Box pizza wood is legal to transport wherever you take your portable pizza oven.
You can enjoy enough wood to make 20 wood-fired pizzas for only $49.95! Plus, get free shipping nationwide on every order.
At Hot Box, we’re not just about giving you good wood. We’re also here to help you use your wood for good! That’s why we’ve put together this guide to understanding pizza wood and portable pizza ovens.
Here’s a glance at the topics covered:
One of the biggest choices you will make for your pizza oven is the type of wood you will use. The two main categories to choose from are hardwood and softwood.
The difference between the two is the trees they come from. Hardwoods come from trees that lose their leaves in the winter, such as oak, maple or ash trees. Softwoods, on the other hand, come from evergreen trees like cedars and spruces.
So, which wood will make you a better pizza? The answer is hardwood!
Hardwood burns better than softwood for a few reasons. First, hardwood generally contains less moisture than softwood, making it easier to ignite and burn longer. Because hardwood is denser than softwood, it also provides more substance for the fire to burn. Hardwood burns slower and cleaner than softwood as a result.
Of course, choosing hardwood for your pizza oven is only part of the battle. You also need to figure out what type of hardwood you’ll choose.
Here at Hot Box, we believe kiln-dried oak wood is the best type of hardwood you can choose for your pizza oven. In the next sections, we will explain why this type of wood blows the competition away.
If you’re going to make an amazing wood-fired pizza, you’ll need exceptionally dry wood. To be exact, you’ll need wood with a moisture content of below 20%.
As its name indicates, kiln-dried wood is wood that has been dried in a kiln to get its moisture content under 20%. This process is by far the best way to achieve this level of dryness.
The other option for drying out wood is called seasoning. Seasoning is the process of letting the wood dry out naturally over time. The main problem with this method is it rarely gets the moisture content down to below 20%. Instead, the best it can achieve is somewhere between 20-30%. This is because variables like the temperature and humidity levels have a major effect on how well the wood dries.
Getting below the 20% moisture threshold makes a huge difference for cooking wood. The more moisture the wood has, the more difficult it will be to ignite. It also won’t burn as hot as it would if it were below 20% and will produce more smoke. So, your pizza won’t cook as well as it could and will taste way too smoky. On the other hand, kiln-dried wood eliminates these problems for an easier cooking experience with delicious results!
On top of this, the kiln-drying process also kills any bugs, fungus and mold that may be lurking in the wood. The same cannot be said for the seasoning process.
In short, the kiln-drying process is the most efficient way to produce pizza wood that is perfect for cooking every time. That’s why kiln-dried wood is the best!
As we mentioned above, hardwoods are the best choice for pizza ovens because of their density. The heavier and denser the wood is, the longer and hotter it will burn to produce a well-cooked pizza.
Oak is one of the heaviest and densest hardwoods, making it a very reliable cooking wood. It also produces a subtle, smoky flavor, which is perfect for that classic wood-fired pizza taste.
But don’t just take our word for it. Just ask any professional chef that makes wood-fired pizzas. They will tell you that oak is the best choice because it burns clean and hot. And the delicious results speak for themselves!
Wood-fired pizza ovens can cook pizzas extremely quickly by reaching incredibly high temperatures (700-900 degrees Fahrenheit) that a home oven can’t reach. The top of the pizza oven, called the dome, cooks the top of your pizza. The bottom of the oven, called the stone or the base, cooks the crust on your pizza. To achieve a perfect wood-fired pizza, both the dome and the stone need to be properly heated.
The dome of a pizza oven is heated by rolling flames. These flames occur when the wood has completely caught fire and is continuing to produce hot flames. The flames ascend toward the chimney of the oven and roll over the dome to radiate heat downwards. The flames then draw fresh air into the oven, creating a convection current that keeps creosote and smoke away from your pizza.
The stone of the oven, on the other hand, is heated by two things:
For a properly heated stone, you need to let your oven heat for approximately 15-20 minutes and allow your fire to reach red hot coals.
Without the right pizza oven wood, it’s challenging to get rolling flames over the dome of your pizza oven. Charcoal, for example, will burn extremely hot and will heat the stone. But it will not provide rolling flames that cook the top of your pizza.
Hot Box Cooking Wood is cut to a small diameter and small length because it provides the proper balance of flame and coals. When ignited, the small split pizza wood provides a large rolling flame and gets to hot coals relatively quickly. The result is an evenly heated dome and stone of your oven and perfect pizzas every time.
Delicious wood-fired pizzas are calling your name! And we have the wood to get your portable pizza oven firing on all cylinders. You can visit our shop page to get some of your own today! Or, if you have more questions about pizza wood or pizza ovens, feel free to give us a call at 847-322-0597. We’d be happy to help you out.
