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I was asked the other day if it was a contradiction to say that the round Italian oven design was faster to heat up, and better at holding the high heat required for making great pizza than the thicker barrel vault oven. The question was based on the logic that what heats up faster would give up heat faster.
So, it is true? Does the Italian brick oven heat up faster, and retain high heat better? Yes. The round and thinner Italian oven design is able to sustain the higher heat (700F+) necessary for cooking pizza (or any other high heat cooking) because it is highly efficient at re-charging the oven floor and dome using the fire in the oven. With the Pompeii Oven and Forno Bravo oven, the mass of the dome and floor are filled with heat, and they are efficiently re-charged from the fire. With a high quality material in your dome and floor, you are able to sustain 700F cooking virtually indefinitely. It's a closed-loop system where the heat that food (and the oven opening) take out are equally refueled from the fire. That means no raking the coals over the cooking floor, or waiting for a period of firing while the dome heats back up. Can you imagine an Italian wood-fired pizzeria just stopping cooking during the dinner rush? No. It just doesn't happen.
You cannot maintain this high heat with the barrel vault oven. It is impossible from a physical world perspective. The problem is that the entire mass of the barrel vault dome or floor is never heated to 700F, so the heat from the fire is constantly migrating to the outer reaches of the dome and floor mass. As the outer reach of the dome mass heats up from 200F to 400F, the inside of the oven quickly falls from 700F to 400F. That's a good thing if you want to bake hundreds of loaves of bread at 400F, but it isn't good for a pizzeria, or a back yard pizza oven. In fact, it's incredibly frustrating.
So, is rapid heat up and better sustained high heat a contradiction? No. In fact, these are the characteristics that define a pizza oven.
I sometimes think I am the only person in the world with two working barrel vault ovens and an Italian pizza oven right next to each other. I see the differences every day, and they are not minor. The ovens are completely different -- other than the fact that they are wood fueled.
For folks looking into different basic designs, I hope this is helpful.
James
So, it is true? Does the Italian brick oven heat up faster, and retain high heat better? Yes. The round and thinner Italian oven design is able to sustain the higher heat (700F+) necessary for cooking pizza (or any other high heat cooking) because it is highly efficient at re-charging the oven floor and dome using the fire in the oven. With the Pompeii Oven and Forno Bravo oven, the mass of the dome and floor are filled with heat, and they are efficiently re-charged from the fire. With a high quality material in your dome and floor, you are able to sustain 700F cooking virtually indefinitely. It's a closed-loop system where the heat that food (and the oven opening) take out are equally refueled from the fire. That means no raking the coals over the cooking floor, or waiting for a period of firing while the dome heats back up. Can you imagine an Italian wood-fired pizzeria just stopping cooking during the dinner rush? No. It just doesn't happen.
You cannot maintain this high heat with the barrel vault oven. It is impossible from a physical world perspective. The problem is that the entire mass of the barrel vault dome or floor is never heated to 700F, so the heat from the fire is constantly migrating to the outer reaches of the dome and floor mass. As the outer reach of the dome mass heats up from 200F to 400F, the inside of the oven quickly falls from 700F to 400F. That's a good thing if you want to bake hundreds of loaves of bread at 400F, but it isn't good for a pizzeria, or a back yard pizza oven. In fact, it's incredibly frustrating.
So, is rapid heat up and better sustained high heat a contradiction? No. In fact, these are the characteristics that define a pizza oven.
I sometimes think I am the only person in the world with two working barrel vault ovens and an Italian pizza oven right next to each other. I see the differences every day, and they are not minor. The ovens are completely different -- other than the fact that they are wood fueled.
For folks looking into different basic designs, I hope this is helpful.
James
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