Minecraft wiki entry for Survival_in_an_infinite_desert, associated text: Due to the problems obtaining cobblestone, you are unlikely to have a furnace with which to cook your food. However, even if you do obtain a furnace (e.g. from a village or by blasting cobblestone with a creeper explosion), you still probably won't want to cook your food. Unless you are farming mushrooms, the reason being that wooden fuel is much too precious and limited in supply in the desert biome to waste it on cooking food. (See Fuel below).