Truly local.
We are blessed here in the Northside with magnificent trees in our yards and along the streets. They shade our houses, harbor nesting birds and, when storm or disease take them down, bake our bread. A neighbor on Brown Street recently had to have an enormous sugar maple taken down. The tree trunk, cut into sections, completely filled our driveway. Today I will split the trunk into firewood and stack it to cure. Next winter I will bake bread with the energy stored in this wood.
People ask which wood is best for baking. I have found that different kinds of wood burn differently. Hickory and osage orange (hedge apple) and red oak burn the hottest; maple, ash and walnut burn less hot; basswood and cedar generate little heat. So which is best? There are times and situations for almost all of them. When I want to soak lots and lots of heat into the masonry to prepare for a large bake the following day, hickory is my favorite wood. When I want steady heat and wood which pretty quickly burns away to ash just before I load the loaves, I love maple, ash and walnut. Cedar is handy for getting a fire started. I haven't found a use for basswood yet.
And how do the different types of wood affect the taste of the loaves? Not at all. The oven heats to over 800 degrees F and every trace of wood, including even the oils of cedar and pine, are completely burned away. Once I swab out the hearth, there is nothing but heat remaining.
