From the fire
The Oak Question
People ask if the wood really matters, usually while pointing at the name over the door. It matters. Not as poetry — as fuel with a personality.
Oak burns hot, slow, and steady. That steadiness is the whole reason it is the only wood this oven eats. A fire that spikes and sags makes the pizzaiola chase the temperature all night; oak holds its line, so she can hold hers. Fruit woods smell lovely and burn like gossip — bright, fast, gone.
The splits are seasoned two summers before they earn a place by the oven. Green wood wastes its heat boiling its own water and sulks smoke into the room. Dry oak lights clean, settles into coals that glow like the inside of the earth, and gives the dome the even nine hundred the ninety-second bake depends on.
And the ash — the other half of the name — gets raked each morning, cooled, and taken by a gardener two streets over for her tomatoes. Which come back through the door in August, on the Garden. The fire feeds the block and the block feeds the fire. She likes the shape of that.
The Feed
Sparks up,
settle, glow.
