Some neighbors of mine, even more into food quality than I am, have pondered building a wood-fired oven. If they do, I think breads and pizzas will be a great way to try it out, and I think that would be preferable to this:
On most ovens the electronics won’t let you go above 500F, about 300 degrees short of what is needed. (Try baking cookies at 75 instead of 375 and see how it goes). The heat is needed to quickly char the crust before it has a chance to dry out and turn into a biscuit. At this temp the pizza takes 2 – 3 min to cook (a diff of only 25F can change the cook time by 50%). It is charred, yet soft. At 500F it takes 20 minutes to get only blond in color and any more time in the oven and it will dry out. I’ve never cooked a good pizza below 725 – a 5 min pie. And that’s pushing it. The cabinet of most ovens is obviously designed for serious heat because the cleaning cycle will top out at over 975 which is the max reading on my Raytec digital infrared thermometer. The outside of the cabinet doesn’t even get up to 85F when the oven is at 800 inside. So I clipped off the lock using garden shears so I could run it on the cleaning cycle.
I think you can ovens that will get pizza-hot without anything this drastic . . .
I think I’ll take a look at his mixing techniques and ingredients, but skip the chainsaw-modified appliances.