HPC Fire Premium White Oak Cooking Wood Splits for Pizza Ovens, 25 lb Box

Description

HPC Fire premium white oak cooking wood is a 25 pound box of cured Carolina white oak, split to 10 to 12 inches for a pizza oven chamber, sold by the maker of the Forno, Villa and Di Napoli hybrid ovens for the wood side of those ovens and for any other oven that burns wood. It is the wood HPC puts in its own ovens, cut to the length a pizza oven fire wants, dried so it lights and burns clean, and boxed so it arrives by parcel rather than by the cord.

At $84 a box it is not a season's firewood; it is the box that gets a new oven through its first fires without a trip to find seasoned hardwood, and the box an owner keeps on the cart shelf for the night the woodpile is wet. If you are deciding between oak and the other hardwoods, our guide to the best wood types for a pizza oven covers the whole list; white oak is the one it comes back to as the everyday wood.

Why White Oak in a Pizza Oven

White oak is the baseline hardwood for a pizza oven. It is dense, so a split burns long and holds a bed of coals instead of flaring and dying; it is mild, so the smoke seasons the crust without the sweetness of a fruitwood or the bite of hickory; and it is dry wood that lights without fuss once it has been cured, which this has. Fruitwoods and pecan are worth adding for flavor once the oven is familiar, and the wood types guide linked above explains when. For the fire that brings a floor to 800°F and keeps it there through a run of pizzas, oak is what the fire wants.

What matters as much as the species is the cure. Green wood steams instead of burning, smokes out the chamber, leaves creosote in the flue and never gets a floor to temperature. HPC's splits are dried before they are boxed, and a cured 10 to 12 inch oak split catches from kindling in minutes and burns to coals in under an hour.

Which Ovens It Fits

Any oven that burns wood. The 10 to 12 inch split length is cut for HPC's own chambers, the Forno, the Villa and the Di Napoli, where the wood fire sits beside the gas burner for flavor. It suits every other wood burning oven on this site the same way: the ItaliaForno Grande Pro Duo in wood mode, the brick domes from Authentic Pizza Ovens such as the Lisboa, the Maximus Mobile and Prime, the Tuscan Chef, Pinnacolo, Kokomo and Summerset ovens, and the Kucht Venice. A 12 inch split sits across the back of a 20 inch floor or beside the pizza on a 31 inch one; there is no oven in our wood fired pizza oven collection it is too long for.

What it does not do is burn in a gas only oven. The ItaliaForno compacts and Famiglia, the Kucht Napoli, the Halo Versa and the Pinnacolo L'Argilla have no firebox, and wood in the chamber voids their warranties. If your oven has a burner and a floor with no room for a fire, this box is not for it.

How Far a Box Goes

A wood fire at pizza temperature burns 4 to 6 pounds of split hardwood an hour, so a 25 pound box is four to six hours of fire. On a brick oven run entirely on wood, that is one long evening: an hour to heat, a run of pizzas, and the fire banked for bread after. On a hybrid such as the Forno or the Grande Pro Duo, where gas does the preheat and the wood is a small fire beside the pizzas for flavor, a box lasts two or three nights. Owners who cook every weekend on wood alone buy by the cord; this box is for everyone else, and for the first fires of a new oven, which should be small ones with dry wood.

Storing It

Keep the box off the ground and out of the rain, on the bottom shelf of the oven cart under a cover, in a shed, or on a covered porch. Cured oak that gets wet dries again in a week in the open air but will not light the night it rains. Do not store the box inside the oven: a cold chamber sweats, and the first fire with damp wood in it is the smoky one.

What to Order With It

The box goes on the same order as the oven, where it ships free with the oven's freight and arrives on the same delivery. On its own it ships by parcel at the rate shown at checkout, which on 25 pounds of oak is a real number; two boxes on one order spread it. For the HPC ovens the rest of the accessory set is on the HPC Fire brand page, and everything else that lives with an outdoor oven is in our pizza oven accessories collection. If you are still choosing between a wood oven and a gas one, our post on wood fired versus gas pizza ovens is where that decision lives.

Crustify is an authorized HPC Fire dealer. The wood ships from HPC's warehouse in Dayton, Ohio or Las Vegas, Nevada, usually within 1 to 2 business days. A crushed or wet box on arrival is reported to us within 24 hours with a photo and HPC replaces it; a box that has been opened is not returnable, since it is a natural product. Questions go straight to the owner by chat or email and are usually answered the same day.

Best way to buy: add this to your pizza oven order. Orders over $750 ship free.

KEY FEATURES

• HPC Fire premium white oak cooking wood, SKU FDP-WOOD, the wood HPC supplies for its own Forno, Villa and Di Napoli hybrid ovens
• 100 percent Carolina white oak, cured and dried before boxing; no treated wood, no construction lumber, no softwood
• Split to 10 to 12 inches, the length a pizza oven fire wants, in a 25 pound box
• Dense, long burning and mild in smoke: the everyday hardwood for a pizza oven, with fruitwoods added for flavor if you like
• Four to six hours of fire a box at pizza temperature; one long evening on a wood only oven, two or three on a hybrid
• Works in any oven that burns wood; the split length suits every wood burning oven on this site
• Not for gas only ovens, where wood in the chamber voids the warranty
• Boxed for parcel shipping; ships from Dayton, Ohio or Las Vegas in 1 to 2 business days
• Ships free on the same order as an oven; rate at checkout on its own
• Not eligible for Crustify coupon codes

SPECIFICATIONS

INSTALLATION GUIDE & USER MANUAL

First fires. A new masonry or hybrid oven wants small fires with dry wood before its first full burn; follow the curing schedule in your oven's manual and use this box for it, two or three splits at a time, rather than whatever is in the yard.

Building the fire. Kindling and two splits in the center of the floor, lit from the front. Add a split every 15 to 20 minutes as the flame settles, and once the dome has burned from black to pale, push the coals to the back or side with the peel and lay a fresh split on them so there is a live flame beside the cooking floor. Add one split at a time between pizzas to hold the flame; a big load smokes and cools the floor.

On a hybrid. Preheat on gas, then build a small wood fire on the wood side of the chamber, away from the burner and its deflector. Two or three splits is enough for flavor over an evening with the burner on low.

Never burn treated lumber, painted or stained wood, pallet wood, charcoal briquettes or pellets in a pizza oven, and never use an accelerant to light it.

WARRANTY INFORMATION

Firewood is a natural product and carries no defect warranty. HPC Fire replaces a box that arrives crushed, open or wet: photograph it and contact us within 24 hours of delivery with your order number, and we handle it with HPC. An opened box is not returnable.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - FAQ'S

Your Questions Answered Before You Buy

The questions we get most often about pizza oven wood, answered straight. If yours is not here, chat or email goes to the owner and you will usually hear back the same day.