Measuring the temperature

I'm relatively new to my half-barrel brick oven, which I built myself last summer.  I've got a couple of cookbooks for wood-fired ovens. They tell you to bring the oven to 450 degrees, or whatever, but they don't say what they mean by that.  I use a laser thermometer to measure the temperatures of the walls, floor, etc.  For pizza, I focus on the temp of the oven floor, but what do you measure for baking bread? It seems like the air temp would be more important than it is for pizza. 

I'd love any suggestions for how you measure temperature for baking artisan bread.