outdoor oven design 42" oven with interior shelf

[Thorr]

I am in the process of building an outdoor kitchen, i have a 11foot by 10 foot L with a massive oven planned or the corner. (60" square). One thought that baffles me is why would you not design in two shelves on either side 1.5" thick to create a "channel" down the center to facilitate ash removal? so you could cook breads/pizza on the shelf away from the contamination of ash and charcoal... what am I missing? is it just reduction of cooking surface? page 8 of the pompeii instruction book shows a fire to the side again is that just to maximize the cooking surface area - i thought about adding a soapstone or bluestone shelf what do you think?

[david s]

Any ledge, groove or shelf actually hinders the moving of coals or ash, so a totally flat surface is preferable IMO, but it's a solution nevertheless. I don't clean out the ash after every firing and in fact, if you totally burn away all the carbon in the ash tree is really very little to deal with. I have to admit that I'm a bit lazy when cooking bread and I don't bother cleaning the oven first. As long as you let the wood burn down to glowing coals, when you door the oven they will extinguish and you won't get any smoky flavour. Because the floor is always a bit too hot, I place my bread on trays so they don't get burnt bottoms and that also negates the need to clean the floor of ash.