I like to use kerosene to clean things up afterwards, and then I usually put a little marvel mystery oil over the clean parts. I find the mystery oil makes scraping the carbon a little easier too. I also like the way it smells!
You can easily turn the engine over by hand using the fan belt, with the trans in neutral.
You'll want to spray your new head gasket with that copper spray sold for just this purpose.
Once the head is back on the truck, you'll want to use an oil can and oil all the rockers, pushrods, valves, etc so they aren't dry on startup.
As for break in, the manual covers this I think. If I recall, you put 'er back together, set the valve lash at the loose end, then warm up the truck to operating temperature and let it cool down, then re check the torque on the head bolts. Then warm the truck up to operating temperature, and reset the valve lash.
It might be worth taking a look into the rocker arm tube, and making sure there is no sludge in there, if the head has been rebuilt, it should be clean, but you never know... On a previous truck I owned, a local machine shop had rebuilt the head just before I bought the truck, and the tube was full of sludge still, it hadn't been cleaned out!
