Tips for keeping your brick oven in good shape

1. Remember that before you use your oven for the first time, you will need to cure it. The curing instructions are provided with your oven. 
Curing is basically drying out your oven to get rid of the moisture that is trapped inside the bricks, caused by the building method.
Also, to avoid excessive expansion of the dome and door arch, start the cooking fires always moderately and not too close to the front. Start it rather in the middle towards the back of the oven. 

2. If for some reason you don't use your oven for an extended period of time, we recommend to every now and then light just a little fire to keep the moisture out. Although the outside of our wood fired ovens are protected from the elements by the sealant, the refractory bricks and tiles on the inside of your oven is built tend to absorb humidity. 
So one or two little fires every month if you do not use it regularly, especially in humid areas and/or after heavy rainy periods.
But the best thing is of course: just use it. Even in colder seasons when you don’t have lunches or dinners outside, cook your roasts and stews in your oven and enjoy them for an indoor meal. It is a healthy addiction, cooking in your wood fired oven! 

3. We always recommend to start your cooking fire moderately each time, so that eventually present humidity can dry and the refractory bricks and mortar can warm up slowly. This can help prevent excessive cracking.

4. The best wood for cooking are high density woods such as Iron Bark or Black or Grey Box as they burn nice and slow and thus retain heat for longer. But you can use other types of hard wood, as long as it has not previously been painted or treated. And always make sure the wood you use is very dry.
Do not use pressure treated lumber, chipped wood products, sappy wood such as pine, laminated wood or any material other than dry hard wood (do not burn the crate the oven comes in).
Never use liquid fuel to start or maintain a fire!
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5. Keeping your oven clean is simple: after baking bread, the only residue you have is a bit of burnt flour, which is easily swept out after cooling down.
Cooking in oven dishes will not make your oven dirty, and if any incrustation of grease splashes occurs, that will burn away when lighting your next fire.
Only after baking pizza in your oven, a little more “cleaning” is required. As mozzarella or other cheese melts and easily spills of the pizza on the oven floor.
When you finish baking pizzas simply spread the formed coals over the cooking area, so that the spilt and crusted mozzarella and topping will burn and turn to ashes which can be removed after cooling.