All photos courtesy Breeo
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There’s something incredibly primal about cooking over an open flame. This is how we have cooked food for 100,000 years. Before we invented agriculture or knew how to build houses, we cooked over wood. The flavors, aromas, and tactile experience run deep, deep down in our collective memories.
A charcoal barbecue mimics cooking over wood, and a gas barbecue is a passing reference to it, but cooking over logs is ur-barbecue… it‘s outdoor cooking at its very source. Wood smoke can give your food the most sublime aroma and taste, a sensation that evokes deep sensory memories. But get it wrong and you can end up with a nearly inedible mess.
I’ve experienced both. The latter came when I was a kid on a camping trip, and my aunt tried to make us grilled cheese sandwiches over a damp wood fire, saturating the bread with smoke so thick you could feel it congealing on your tongue. It took years before I could eat grilled cheese after that. I’ve also owned – and sold – a cheap smoker that managed to turn perfectly good pieces of fish and chicken into dried-out hunks that one could gnaw on for weeks.
Introducing the Breeo Fire Pit and Pizza Oven
But I’ve also enjoyed some truly amazing wood cookery. Usually, it’s been prepared by professionals or very, very serious amateurs. A bagel shop in Montreal, Quebec, a roadside barbecue place on the way to Florida, a pizzeria where they pay as much attention to the fire as they do to the dough.
I’ve not managed to achieve that level of wood-fired cookery, but the Breeo Smokeless Fire Pit and pizza oven have taken me very close to those exalted heights. I spent a few weeks, and went through a fair pile of firewood, putting it through its paces recently, and enjoyed some truly memorable dishes.
Breeo offers several different configurations, providing cooks with an array of options. I started with their smokeless fire pit with a grill above. The grill mounts on a post that is installed in the side of the fire pit, a simple and flexible arrangement that allows you to easily move the grill higher or lower, depending on how much heat you want. You can also swing the grill sideways, letting you have only part of it over the fire – handy if the meat is done but the vegetables need a bit more time, for example.
Grilling Over the Flames
The post is easily removable, and it even comes with a ground-mount attachment, letting you use the grill over a campfire. Other optional attachments include a hook for a kettle, and a flat-top griddle so that you can cook almost anything.
And believe me, once you get a taste of wood-cooked food, you will want to use this for almost anything. I cooked rainbow trout, steak, burgers, and a whole array of vegetables on the Breeo and everything tasted better than it would have on a gas grill. It wasn’t that it was smoky, although the smoke was there. Rather, the food tasted richer, more complex, more nuanced. One night I cooked whole eggplant on the grill, then made it into the best baba ganouj I’ve ever had; another night I turned ordinary grocery store sausages into something marvelous.
I was hooked, but the best was yet to come when I mounted the pizza oven on top of the fire pit.
The Best Pizza Ever
I’ve made pizza for years, but I only started taking it seriously about five years ago, experimenting with dough recipes before I found one that was just right. I can make a really good pizza in the oven, but that was all it was: a “good pizza.” To elevate it to “great,” I needed a wood fire.
Great wood-fired pizza needs two elements: a hint of smoke and a lot of heat. The Breeo provides both. The smoke passes through the edge of the baking chamber, giving the dough just a kiss as it goes past. But the thick pizza stones heat up quickly and hold the heat. And the thick steel walls and ceiling reflect heat onto the pie so that it is cooked from all sides.
A thermometer on the side lets you know when you’ve reached the ideal temperature – between 800 and 900 degrees is an ideal range. At that temperature, your pizza cooks in a minute or two, which is perfect when cooking pizzas for a crowd.
The Verdict: The Breeo Fire Pit and Pizza Oven is Great
The results are, not surprisingly, incredible. This was easily the best pizza I’ve ever made, and, at the risk of sounding boastful, among the best I’ve ever had. The crust was crisp and lightly charred underneath, with a delightful chewiness that you can only get with fast cooking. The smokiness was subtle but present. As with the grilled food, the toppings had a greater depth and complexity than I’ve been able to achieve before.
Every aspect of the Breeo is top-notch. Solid construction makes for units that look great and will last for years. Accessories such as the pizza peel, slicer, and serving tray are well thought out and useful.
And best of all, there’s a whole world of wood-fired cookery to explore. Biscuits in the oven? Sure, let’s try it. What about a cake, or bagels, or baked chicken? Why not? Ribs on the grill, of course. And let’s do kebabs, and maybe some haloumi. And what about wood species? I’ve not experimented enough to see if apple or cherry offers a different flavor than oak or maple. Or perhaps try some mesquite or hickory.
Let me light the fire. Dinner will be ready soon.
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Andrew Wagner-Chazalon is the Managing Editor and CEO of Dockside Publishing and writes about the luxuries to be found in Muskoka and throughout Ontario, as well as birding… and squirrels.
