Looking for profesional pizza oven designs

[j4nnem4n]

Hello everybody on this fantastic board,

I run a small pizzeria in Colombia and I am about to build a second oven on my second floor. Here we have an outside window where we got rid off the glass to get a ventilation flowing. The plan is to box the oven in and try to reduce to oven heating up the kitchen.

We just finished making the block-stand (65" x 78") and after the curing the building will begin. The open window is on the back of the stand and the whole thing is in the corner.

As much as I like the pompeii 42" design there are some doubts that is the best oven for the situation.

First doubt is if I can actually find someone here who could do a fine brick laying job as required. A lack of perfectionism is quiet common here. A simpler design would be a relieve. And for myself I have no experience at all, neither am I handy.

Second is that a design with the chimney on the back would have the tube out of the room in shorter distance as the roof goes down there. Also to make the fire in the back would give benefits with the heat closer to the open window.

Third is the actual cooking space where as I can make up you can bake just two 12" pizzas.

So I am looking for designs or ideas for the next days to get myself a great oven who cooks fast and hopefully doesn't heat up my kitchen, working 10 hrs everyday!

I found a local fire-brick fabric who has all the international standards as well as curved bricks (seem to me they would be of use building a barrel shape). I I also found imported insulating board and blanket.

[texassourdough]

Re: Looking for profesional pizza oven designs

My money would be on ordering a prefab from Forno Bravo (or possibly other). Get good guts! Critiical to a commercial operation. A friend just shut down for two weeks to "fix" his oven/replace 30 bricks that had fallen into the oven! You can put crap around the guts and have it work but if the guts aren't good, it will fail!

Good Luck!
Jay

[C5dad]

Re: Looking for profesional pizza oven designs

j4nnem4n,

texassourdough is correct - to a point. There are plenty of good bricklayers, the question is how close! Look for the folks who work at mines or power plants and/or deal with boilers. They will know how to deal with thin to no mud applications. Odds on, you can find someone. This is almost more an art than science and mud joints are the primary cause of failure in my experience in molten metals!!!!!

If that does not pan out, then definitely go with a modular. FB makes the best in what I have seen personally. (no, I am not kissing up James!) I do not know what your volume is, but that should dictate your oven size! If I were to do another oven, I would shoot for a 50 inch due to the fact that when I entertain, I am at the oven for waaaaaaay too long! Check out Windage on the site for a jumbo oven!!

Chris

[texassourdough]

Re: Looking for profesional pizza oven designs

Good additions, Chris!

I started to comment on size also. My experience suggests that it is really hard to do multiple pies (plus any "other" items like skillets with shrimp/garlic/whatever near the mouth) in an oven under about 42 inches. Go big!

The chimney should not go out the back. While there are hand built variants (most notably that take the chimney back over the dome to the center) you need to be careful with the chimney or you can easily get a chimney that draws poorly and that is not good in an indoor environment. I would use stainless steel insulated chimney pipe and slant it back to the roof if preferred. Your comment that having the "fire at the back would give benefits with the heat closer to the open window" doesn't make any sense to me? The fire should be on the side (to give more room for work and to reduce issues with shoving pies into the fire. Also has the benefit that the oven has, in my experience, a broader temperature zone (hotter in the back/cooler in the front) to work with. And the chimney is not in the cooking area but outside... Something seems amiss in your thinking about the chimney and fire?????

Oh...one other comment on the oven failure. It was a modular oven from Italy (but not from FB). It dropped bricks almost daily until he was able to shut it down and fix it. I have serious concerns for the fix though....Will be interesting to see how long it lasts!

Good luck!
Jay

[j4nnem4n]

Re: Looking for profesional pizza oven designs

Thanks all for the replies.

To order a plan is probably too expensive. I found a advertisement on the colombian ebay about a prefab oven delivered for around 3000 US. That is a lot of pesos! I do my best to stay under this, with the oven and chimney installed

@Jay,

About the size, if I want bigger I will have less space for insulation. My biggest worry is that the oven is going to heat up my kitchen to much.

I spoke to someone who made a pizza oven (barrel vault rectangle) with double walls, where he used the chamber between the walls as part of the chimney vent, so you can get the air leaving the oven in the front and leaving the building at the back, perfect in my case. He claimed the second wall was never heating up.

I understand from you (and also in pompeii manual) to have the vent outside the dome. I can imagine the advantage in better circulation, but most of the ovens I saw and also mine downstairs have the tube landed into the dome. It works, but I have no idea how much better it would have baked my pizzas if it was outside.

All the help in designing is more then welcome. Its going to be a oven exclusively for pizzas. If it can bake 3 or 4 pizzas at the time that would be enough for capacity for us.

Thanks allready.