Whether you’ve just purchased a wood fired pizza oven, or you’ve owned one for a while… At some point, you’ll start to wonder:
“What kind of pizza oven wood should I be using?”
It’s a fair question.
There’s lively debate all over the internet about the best wood to use for an offset smoker or pellet grill… So why wouldn’t it be the same for your pizza oven?
It’s true, there are some similarities.
But actually… The world of pizza oven wood is actually more cut and dry than you might anticipate. We even tested it for ourselves.
So hop in to get all your pizza oven wood-related questions answered… And see the test results of 3 top brands.
Let’s fire it up.
Quick Links:
- We Answer Your Burning Questions about Wood for Wood Fired Pizza Oven
- The Best Wood to Burn in Pizza Oven — Our Detailed Review
- The 6 Testing Parameters We Honed in On
- The 3rd Best Pizza Oven Wood Brand
- The 2nd Best Pizza Oven Wood Brand
- …And Our 1st Place Winner
- You’ve Got the Wood & the Pizza Oven, What’s Next?
Pizza Oven Wood FAQ’s
We know… You’ve got lots of questions on your mind.
Before we proceed to the test, let’s clear the air a bit.
What Wood is Best for Pizza Oven?
Let’s start things off simple.
What type of wood should you be using in your pizza oven?
Hardwood? Softwood? Specific species?
First of all, you should always be using hardwood in your pizza oven.
Why? It burns hot and clean.
Softwoods like pine or spruce are full of sticky, strong resin. This can accumulate in your oven, but it can also give your pizza a yucky, resinous flavor.
Ick.
So the answer’s clear. There’s nothing better to use than 100% pure hardwood in your pizza oven.
need a place to put your oven?
Does the Wood Flavor Your Pizza?
Now you know to always use hardwood in your outdoor pizza oven. Check.
Does the type of hardwood you use matter? Will cherry, hickory, or red oak flavor your pizzas differently?
Nope. Shocking, we know… But there’s a clear reason for this.
When you smoke a rack of ribs, you’re holding the smoker at a low temperature ranging from 180°- 250°F. This long, low smoke lets the ribs absorb as much smoke flavor as possible over the course of several hours.
With a pizza, it couldn’t be more different.
A true Neapolitan pizza gets fired at a searing hot 950°F and cooks in about 60-90 seconds… Which really doesn’t leave any time for flavors to develop.
Plus, the volatile oils in hardwood that provide flavor are getting vaporized at such a high temperature anyway. So when it comes to wood-fired flavor in a pizza… It’s actually kind of a myth! Point is, use whatever hardwood you like. It will all work beautifully in your oven.
How Much Wood do I Need for a Pizza Oven?
We’ve got the what and why… But what about how much?
If you’re in the middle of churning out pies for a bumping pizza party… Running out of wood in the middle of your cook would be a total disaster.
The quantity of wood you need for cooking pizza depends on the size of your oven… And how long you’ll be cooking for.
The larger the oven, the more wood you’ll need to use. (Of course!)
A small, portable pizza oven might need 5” wood pieces… Whereas a large pizza oven could need pieces up to 18” long.
To get a fire started, you’ll generally need 5-10 mini logs to get things going. Every so often, you’ll need to add a chunk or two to keep the temperature up.
So how much?
It depends! Most premade pizza oven wood boxes will include 15 lbs – 25 lbs of wood… So this is a good stock to keep on hand just in case.
And now that you know all about the wood you need for the best pizza cooking experience… Let’s review a few of the top pizza oven wood brands.
Pizza Oven Wood Review: Who Burns the Brightest?
Alright, enough questions… Time to get some answers.
What brand of outdoor pizza oven wood should you be buying?
Onto our review of the best sellers.
The 3 Brands We Tested
Our (Super Scientific) Testing Parameters
Packaging Quality & Extras
It may seem like a small quibble… But packaging matters!
You don’t want a haphazardly packed box of loose wood pieces to show up at your doorstep, after all.
It may not be the end all be all… But we will admit, we do like to see a nice presentation from these brands.
And if we got a couple extra goodies in our box of wood for pizza oven… Well, we’ve got to give out bonus points, don’t we?
Size & Consistency
Another quality we looked for is size and consistency between the pieces.
A large reason why you’re buying pizza oven wood specifically is that all the work is done for you.
You’re expecting consistently-cut pieces that are all the same length… And roughly the same size.
This is particularly important if you have a small, countertop pizza oven. If the box you buy has pieces that are inconsistent and too long… They won’t even fit in your oven!
That’s annoying.
So when we see lots of pieces that are neat and orderly… The brand gets a “kudos” from us.
Ease of Lighting
Another possible wrench in your plan of obtaining a perfect pizza is how long it takes your oven to get started!
If the wood is a challenge to light… That’s a frustrating experience. Especially if you’ve got a lot of hungry mouths waiting to be fed!
Of course, if you don’t properly store your wood, it won’t remain dry. We tested all these brands straight out of the box, so we’ve got a good baseline on how well each one will light.
Time to Coal Stage
We also wanted to know… How long does it take to get everything going?
The best wood for pizza oven should come up to a high heat quickly… And stay there for a while.
That’s what we’re looking for when we reference the “coal stage”. The wood is starting to form nice, hot coals… And at that point, a stunning Neapolitan style pizza is mere minutes away.
The sooner you can enjoy your pizza… The happier you’ll be.
Longevity of the Wood Burn
And as much as we love to see a quick ramp-up time from a box of pizza oven wood… We also don’t want it to be a flash in the pan and burn out quickly.
So if we can achieve a good balance between a speedy heat-up, and a long-lasting burn… That’s the ideal scenario.
But of course, hardwood is hardwood. There’s only so much variance between types and brands… So we’re looking at small differences between them.
Our Equipment
Wrapping things up… What were our tools for the trade? Did we use an Ooni oven? A brick oven?
Neither one.
We used a brand-spanking-new Coyote pizza oven for our test… Which served a couple purposes.
We got to test out all those lovely pizza oven wood brands we’ve been alluding to… But we also got to test the mettle of Coyote’s pizza oven. (Which we will say, performed swimmingly!)
This pizza oven includes an insulated chimney (the only one of its kind), which ensured our heat retention was off the charts… But we’re getting off track.
For now, it’s time to see how each brand of pizza oven wood performed.
get your pizza station up and running
3rd Place: More Smoke, Less Fire
Coming in at the bottom of our list, we have SMOAK firewood.
It’s not a bad box of wood, by any means… But it just slightly underperformed compared to the other brands we tested.
The package itself was nothing to write home about… But there’s nothing to count against it, either!
It came in a good cardboard box, and that’s about it.
Consistency between pieces is where SMOAK lost a couple points from us.
The wood pieces were fairly inconsistent… And it seemed like some of the larger pieces were only half-chopped.
Point is, you would have to do a little extra work to get these pieces to work flawlessly in your pizza oven. And since we’re looking for a plug-and-play experience, that’s something we didn’t love to see.
Our box of SMOAK took about 15 minutes to light, which was a bit of a struggle on our end. (It took us the longest to light this brand.)
That said, it took 20 minutes for this wood to get hot enough to cook with… Which was right in line with our 2nd place winner.
As for how often we had to re-fuel… We were adding in new wood chunks every 20-25 minutes or so. (Which performed smack dab in the middle of our rankings.)
Overall, SMOAK performed fairly well. But there are a couple other pizza oven wood brands that beat it out by just a hair.
2nd Place: An Impressive Runner-Up
For our standout runner-up… We’ve got to highlight OOFT firewood.
Their most popular selections are intended to be used in an Ooni Karu 12 or 16. So if you’re looking for the best wood for Ooni pizza oven… You may just have found your perfect match.
That said, there’s a couple reasons why we ranked this as #2 rather than #1. (We’ll get to that!)
As far as the packaging goes… It was good, but not mind-blowing. It was well-designed, and does what it needs to do — hold pizza oven wood.
Consistency was an A++ here. Every piece was pretty much identical in terms of dimensions.
The pieces were quite small, however. If you have a portable pizza oven like an Ooni, this will be perfect for you.
But because we’re using a larger pizza oven, it wasn’t ideal to have such small pieces. So if you have a large pizza oven… You’ll likely want to stick to a brand that offers larger chunks.
When it comes to performance, we were pretty happy with OOFT.
Lighting the pieces was super easy… And it took between 10-15 minutes to get the oven hot enough to cook pizza. (The quickest of all!)
On the flip side… That quick ramp-up time of the smaller pieces also led to a quicker burnout. We were having to refill the oven every 10 to 15 minutes to keep the fire roaring.
For a smaller oven, this is probably par for the course… But since we’re heating up a larger oven, we need a little more staying power.
And it’s for this reason that our final brand stole the #1 position…
1st Place: On the Cutting Edge of Victory
While all three pizza oven woods we tested had some standout moments… There’s one that rose high above the rest.
Cutting Edge was the brand that cut down the competition, you could say.
For us, Cutting Edge was a match made in heaven for our wood-burning pizza oven. And here’s why.
Right off the cuff, Cutting Edge makes a good impression. The packaging is sleek, attractive… And the box itself is pleasantly sturdy.
Plus, we got plenty of extras that turned a simple box of pizza oven wood… Into an all-inclusive kit for outdoor cooking.
Our box came with fire starters, matches, kindling… It was everything we needed for an outstanding pizza night. (We even got some swag!)
If there was a ding to be had… It would have to be on the consistency between pieces. The sizes were hit or miss.
Since we have a larger oven, this wasn’t a big deal. We also didn’t test the smaller pizza oven wood sizes, so those may be more consistent than what we received. (We can’t comment on what we haven’t tried, but it’s something to be aware of!)
That said, it was all up from here.
Lighting the logs was made effortless with the help of Cutting Edge’s included fire starting kit… And the fire was rolling and ready to cook within around 20-25 minutes.
Although we must admit that this was the slowest ramp-up time of the bunch… These logs were also here to stay.
We only had to add more chunks every 20-25 minutes or so. Which left us with more time to focus on finessing the pizza peel… And less time worrying about keeping the fire fed.
Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You’ve invested in a pizza oven to make crispy, tantalizing pies… Not to stoke a fire!
Ultimately, any of the brands we discussed today could be an excellent choice for your pizza oven… But for us, Cutting Edge takes the cake.
No matter which brand you choose for your outdoor home oven… There’s one thing that will make your pizza-making dreams truly complete.
Get Yourself a Complete Pizza Cooking Station
Alright. You’ve got your pizza oven… You’ve got your wood… In our minds, there’s one thing missing from the equation.
If you want the best wood-fired cooking experience possible… The versatility of a grill island is simply unmatched.
Not only do you have a beautiful place to rest your wood or gas fired pizza oven… You also have several quality-of-life upgrades that makes the pizza cooking experience far more enjoyable.
Take the countertop, for example. Rather than being stuck prepping your pizza inside… You can work on your pizza dough in close proximity to your pizza oven.
The benefits go far beyond keeping the mess outside… You can closely watch the pizzas you’re cooking on the pizza stone, while prepping a new pie.
It’s efficiency at its finest.
But you can think even bigger than that.
What about getting a stainless steel BBQ grill? A natural gas or propane grill is a quick and easy way to get some appetizers on the table… While your guests wait for their personal pizza pie.
An outdoor refrigerator can keep your dough proofing worry-free… And even something as simple as storage drawers can keep all your pizza-prepping tools within arm’s reach.
It’s the perfect complement to your high-quality, Italian-made pizza oven. (Or the Coyote pizza oven powerhouse!)
No matter what outdoor kitchen layout is ideal for you… We’d humbly ask you to consider RTA Outdoor Living for your future backyard project.
Our outdoor kitchens are fully customizable, come with a lifetime warranty… And will be paired with the premium outdoor appliances of your dreams from Coyote Outdoor LivingCoyote Grills: 6 Essential Considerations & In-Depth Review.
Starting to get curious?
If so… Take our free online design tool for a spin, and let’s chat about your future outdoor kitchen and pizza oven!
