Advice

[mrgweeto]

Goodmorning,
My brother and I are seriously considering building our own pizza oven useing the plans from the Forno Bravo website. We make our own wine, grappa and keep up with our Italian heritage. We have been making pizza forever in an oven set as high as you can get it useing a pizza stone. Tastes great but lacks that brick oven taste. We met a gentleman that owns a restaurant that has built a barrel oven. His concern with us making the beehive type was that, even in his, when you put a pie in the oven the pie that is closest to the actual coals burns. Is the beehive type (42") better equiped to make pizza? He puts bricks in front of the fire to shield the intense heat from the pizzas further back. Any info you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
mrgweeto

[dmun]

Re: Advice

You can burn pizzas in any oven. Learning to manage the fire, and the placement of the pizza is a skill that you learn from practice.

We're great believers in dome shaped ovens here. They have less mass and a better configuration for getting the heat where it is needed. You may have read this primer already, if not, it's worth the time:

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f2/w...s-round-2.html

Welcome to the FB forum.

[DrakeRemoray]

Re: Advice

I love to hear about the tradition (Wine, Grappa...no prosciutto?). Italian ovens are all round...that should be reason enough! I don't have to tell you that the Italians get it right on things like this...

Seriously though, you cook the pizzas so fast that you are moving them around to get them properly cooked. It is 2 minutes per pie when all is going well...I usually only cook one at a time in my 38, though I could do two...
Drake

[nissanneill]

Re: Advice

mrgweeto
you can burn anything and you probably will in your initial attempts with any oven.
I have a 40" Pompeii and we cook our pizzas when the oven is first ready at around 500˚C in 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. My last one was done in close to 1 minute, my guests just stood there in amazement to see it rise and the cheese melting.
Once they get he taste of the first pizza, we cook at least 3 in there at a time but some one is watching and turning them continuously.
I have had up to 5 X 10 - 12" pizzas in at once but that was a real challenge to handle them and a couple got crispy edges. As the oven cools a little (as I don't have a hot fire going in the oven, more coals), you can cook more together as they take longer to bake. You have more time to tend them.

Neill

[mrgweeto]

Re: Advice

Thank you all for the advice. the more I research the more I see that the tunnel ovens are used more for the people that are strickly making breads and the beehive are more for the pizza makers as well as making excellent breads. My godchild is in his first year at the Culinary Ihnstitute of America and his first class are going to be in....yes you guessed it....Hearth Breads. OH!! have made prosciutto and still mushroom and can but this pizza oven is becoming an obsession with us. broke ground and looking forward to getting the time to start mixing cement and getting up to the oven base before the really cold weather sets in.
Thanks for the advice,
mrgweeto