How to Cure Your Polito Woodfire Oven

Using a wood-fired pizza oven is one of the most exciting experiences in cooking. The intense and direct heat from fresh wood has an amazing effect on pizza character, transforming the oven, cooking pizza toppings, and baking the dough into a lovely mix of darker, crisp, and richly complex slightly smoked pizza.What’s economic about the oven is that the pizza roulette will always come up with a big win for a group of friends or family to gather around with the polar-right crust, and the pizza party will be all good. Learning to make perfect pizza is as much fun and joy as having an opportunity to host such a likable party.This in depth post is for precisely those who have started curing on the very first day, and for those who have become serious foodies after cooking on the lovely pizza three more times, and for those who would enjoy pizza at home on the fifth day. Aren’t you lucky? Polito has been available for serious pizza guys and others who have some more spare cash and can afford the price for amazing pizza. Well, the interesting thing about authentic “Serious Pizza Enthusiasts” is that they are very interested in the essence of pizza. 

Understanding the Oven Curing Process

One of the most critical processes for wood-fired ovens is oven curing. Curing involves gradually heating the oven you’ve built to temper and dry out the masonry materials inside. These materials will most likely still contain some level of moisture due to the water mixed into the concrete applied between your oven pieces. If moisture exists, lighting a fire and achieving high heat too soon will cause oven parts to crack as the water rapidly expands into steam and is forced out of the brick.5-7 consecutive days of increasingly larger fires will slowly pull that moisture to the oven surface, where it will evaporate. The slower, more controlled exit of this moisture will allow it to escape without “blowing up” the brick containing it. Once cured, the oven will also achieve a greater level of temperature stability.Outdoor pizza ovens need heat retention. Oven curing stabilizes your oven so that internal heat is retained at a more consistent temperature. The ceiling of the oven (having also undergone a stabilisation curing) will then burn off accumulated soot. It is the stabilisation of temperature that will eventually enable you to lock in a “napoletana” level of very high heat 

Preparing for the Curing Process

You are not going to need much to cure your Polito Woodfire Pizza Oven. Dry, seasoned hardwood like oak or maple because they burn hotter and cleaner, a fire starter—we recommend pieces of kindling or newspaper, to light the fire, and a thermometer to measure the heat the oven is capable of achieving.For the build itself, you want to make sure you are building this oven on a rock-solid surface. Stay away from wooden decks or any kind of structure near any type of material. Our main guy, Pat, also recommends doing this in open spaces with proper ventilation for obvious reasons. If you don’t own a fire extinguisher, buy a fire extinguisher, just in case! Every home should have one anyway, we hope! 

Step-by-Step Guide to Curing Your Polito Pizza Oven

The first step in the curing process of ceramics is an initial firing. This low-temperature fire removes any moisture from the green body of ceramic. If the ceramic isn’t dry, the remaining moisture will evaporate too rapidly during the subsequent firings and create cracks. This temperature should be between 93 – 260°C, depending on your pizza oven’s ceramic.The water in the ceramic constituency takes on two forms: the first is surface water, which will evaporate at approximately 100°C. This is where “browning” can occur, along with “toasting” where desired.Following the initial shaping and drying out of the ceramics, they are then fired over 24 hours. The firing temperature is gradually increased to about 980 to 1090 degrees. After this stage, the ceramic takes on a “bisque” stage. During the bisque, the ceramic is “frozen” in form but is otherwise ready to accept glaze for the next step in the dyeing process.  

Tips for Successful Curing and Maintenance of Your Pizza Oven

The following are key procedures and tips for a successful oven curing process

Initial firings are done slowly, gradually getting hotter and hotter. Each time you fire your oven, the heat will disperse throughout the oven dome (heat travels towards cold, working from the hot inner oven dome towards the cooler insulating dome). Allow the heat to move through the materials, expanding and contracting all of the time, taking into account thermal dynamics. Rushing the procedure will shock the oven.Small, cool fires, slowly drying the oven, is what you are initially trying to achieve. So the cure begins from the outside and slowly works its way to the centre. Using wet wood, firewood, or any type of combustible with high moisture content can cause problems. 

Cure your Polito Woodfire Oven in a few easy steps to help increase the performance and lifespan of the oven

The process involves cleaning the oven and then bringing it up to temperature over several days to allow the materials to heat up and cool down gradually. Do not heat up the oven too fast the first few times you use it, as this could cause small microfractures on the cooking surface due to the oven’s heating and cooling off too quickly. Enjoy your first several pizzas or roasts, as the wood and the cooking process help build up a great tasting cooking surface for you to enjoy for years.The curing process should be a slow and thoroughly performed operation, only for the reason that it is the first time you will heat your oven, and it will help ‘break in’ the oven and ensure you will experience great results. The curing process will heat your oven enough to burn off the acrylic stucco curing compound. The oven will also soak up much of the heat, and you will expect to see a white patch on the top of the dome after a few hours, as well as ensuring your oven will continue to build a great surface (that will turn black) for you to cook on for the first time. The oven will also start to relieve the many built-in tensions that the oven will gradually release, similar to cracking a car windscreen. The oven will continue sucking up the heat for a long time and it may need several days to ‘cure’ this process, and there will undoubtedly be ‘hidden’ moisture that you will want to drive off. Once the curing is done, be sure to know how to use your woodfire pizza oven like a pro! buon appetito! 

Important Takeaways of Curing Your Woodire Pizza Oven

• Wood-fired ovens create smoky, crispy, rich pizza with intense heat.

• Perfect for hosting pizza parties – crowd-pleaser guaranteed!

• Curing is essential first step to protect and strengthen your oven.

• Use dry hardwood like oak or maple – burns hot and clean.

• Avoid fast heating – it causes cracking due to trapped moisture.

• Build on a strong, fire-safe base – never a wooden deck!

• Proper curing takes 5–7 days of gradually increasing fires.

• A thermometer helps monitor the right temperature steps.

• Watch for white patches = curing progress & heat saturation.

• Small, cool fires → bigger fires each day = safe and effective.

• A properly cured oven retains heat better and lasts longer.

• Fire extinguisher = a must (Pat says so!).