Our wood fired pizza oven has been used many times for pizzas, and has made the best paella, only possible because of the even high temperature on the base of the oven.
I have just made the best roast pork I have ever made, with fantastic crackling so I am writing down what I did so it is reproduceable.
Roast pork with crackling, made in the wood fired pizza oven.
ROAST PORK IN THE WOOD FIRED PIZZA OVEN
Ingredients
- Pork roll – I used a 5kg roll
- rosemary
- bay leaves
- thyme
- seasoning or rub – anything to suit the vegetables that are being cooked or try this one.
Method
1. Heat the pizza oven, building a good base of coals as the heat has to last a fair while. I started this off when the oven was at 400ºC.
2. Place a rack in a cast iron baking dish, place piece of foil on the rack and line it it with rosemary, bay leaves and thyme.
Herbs in the base of the roasting pan
3. Open out the roast roll, score the skin with a very sharp knife or a stanley knife / box cutter.
4. Place the meat on a board on the draining board of the kitchen sink and pour boiling water over the rind. Dry the skin well, rub oil into the rind and rub in salt.
5. Place the meat onto the herbs in the baking dish.
Scored, dried, oiled and salted ready to cook.
6. Place the meat in the base of the pizza oven, monitor the internal temperature of the meat with a digital thermometer (set it for Veal – medium). When it reaches around 68ºC, take it out and leave to rest, the temperature will keep rising for a while. I like my pork at around 73C. In the pizza oven the heat is coming from the base so be wary that the thermometer is placed towards the base of the meat.
7. If the temperature of the oven goes down too far and the rind hasn’t crisped up, leave the meat in the oven to slow cook then remove the meat, add extra wood and bring the head right up and return the meat to the oven to complete the rind.
8. Potatoes and sweet potatoes can be placed in the oven at the same time as the meat.
Hi,
just wondering what the approx cooking time was in the oven? looking at doing this on the weekend and would like to know a rough time to start before people arrive 😉
Thanks
I know that this is a belated answer, I rely totally on my meat thermometer because the size and starting temperature of the meat and the pizza oven vary. My guests just wait.
Hi, I obviously did something horribly wrong! Can I check that you really meant 400°C and not 400°F – we put our pork roast in to our pizza oven at this temp and the skin turned to a soggy blackened mess within 30mins! It seemed way too hot… any thoughts as we’re keen to try this again.
Thanks
That sounds like a total disaster. From memory it would have been 400 Celsius, to get the skin crisp and then we let the oven cool down naturally without adding more wood. Maybe you had a lot more wood in, or your oven holds its heat better. We’re getting the oven going again this week so I’ll pay particular attention to what happens and let you know.
Did you turn it much during cooking or just leave it? did you replenish the fire during the cooking? We are recent owners of a wood fired pizza oven, going great with pizzas but want to do porchetta etc. thanks from Sydney Australia