Pompeii oven heating time

[KevinZ]

How long does it take to heat a Pompeii oven to cook pizzas? I am trying to decide between a Pompeii oven or premio2G oven. I like the look of the inside of the Pompeii but don't want to spend the money for the artigiano. I have heard that it takes 2-3 hours to fire a Pompeii where the premio is 50 minutes.
Thanks!

[Les]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

2-3 hours sounds about right - I always figure on 3 for my oven. The premo is a cast so it will be a little thinner than ours, makes sense that it would heat up faster.

[KevinZ]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

The dome thickness on the premio is 3 inches, is the pompeii oven thicker than that? Which one will get hotter for a Neopolitan 90 sec pizza??

[Les]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

Most of use have cut the brick in half so the thickness would be 4.5 inches before insulation, render, etc... In regard to the temperature, they both should be able to reach the same. It's just a function of fuel / time.

[KevinZ]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

So what are the advantages of the Pompeii oven?

[wotavidone]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

So what are the advantages of the Pompeii oven?

-More thermal mass, if you build it with that goal.
-The satisfaction of DIY, if you take your time and do a tidy job of laying the brick.
-Looks, if you take your time and do a tidy job of laying the brick.
-Can be a lot cheaper, depending on what materials you are prepared to use.


90 second pizzas are possible in either.

Once you graduate from that to the realisation that an oven can be used for much more than a margherita, 90 seconds might not seem so important.

I don't recommend it, but if you want the look of brick and a fast heat up, you can always lay your bricks on edge like I did and end up with a dome less than three inches thick.
I don't recommend it because, the thinner the dome, the less room for the dome to fully contain a catenary curve within the brick, a requisite for a free standing arch.
I believe I get away with it because I cast a block of vermicrete within my shed shaped enclosure. For a brick to move it would have to overcome the compressive strength of vermicrete backed by sheet steel.

My oven will easily go white in under an hour.
However there is much more involved than dome thickness. The firewood you use, and how you use it, is just as important. Ditto the standard of your insulation.

I must say though, if you buy a FB oven you will get a nice oven.
I'd have considered the Andiamo 70 if I hadn't been 2/3 of the way through my build when I became aware of it. Not to mention, I'm in Oz so I suppose it would have been an expensive special order.
An artigiano would get you the best of everything - top shelf materials, bricks, a tradesman/artisan job - and leave you to do the rewarding stuff. Put it together, craft and individual enclosure, etc.

[KevinZ]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

Thanks for the information.....I am starting a patio project on Monday and have hired someone to do it. I am confused on which oven to get as I am chef trained and want to use the oven for many things as well as baking bread. This oven will get a lot of use and that is why I am taking my time trying to figure out the perfect choice.

I am not a mason and the Pompeii oven seems a bit overwhelming for me but I do like the look of it. I think with the right help I might be able to do this as I am very detailed and have tons of patience to do things the right way. Unfortunately there is no FB dealer here in Charlotte NC and I have not met anyone who knows what I am talking about when I mention brick oven pizza. I have looked at several local masons and they all have built barrel shaped ovens. The owners of these style ovens seem very unhappy with them. So far I have not found anyone that could help me install this......

[wotavidone]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

Thanks for the information.....I am starting a patio project on Monday and have hired someone to do it. I am confused on which oven to get as I am chef trained and want to use the oven for many things as well as baking bread. This oven will get a lot of use and that is why I am taking my time trying to figure out the perfect choice.

I am not a mason and the Pompeii oven seems a bit overwhelming for me but I do like the look of it. I think with the right help I might be able to do this as I am very detailed and have tons of patience to do things the right way. Unfortunately there is no FB dealer here in Charlotte NC and I have not met anyone who knows what I am talking about when I mention brick oven pizza. I have looked at several local masons and they all have built barrel shaped ovens. The owners of these style ovens seem very unhappy with them. So far I have not found anyone that could help me install this......

Barrel shaped ovens are bread ovens more than pizza ovens. Pompeii ovens are pizza ovens more than bread ovens. But either can be made to do an acceptable job of either role.

You are right to take your time to figure this out.
Read the FB plans. There is a thread that I can't find right now, just cause I really want to find it, that does a pretty good job of directing people to some very good build threads. It's called a newbies guide to the FB treasures" or something like that.

The biggest hurdle with using a professional mason that I can see, is their attitude to insulation, thermal mass, and the dimensions for dome height v door height, width etc.
When you find a mason who can look past all he knows about bricklaying, open fireplaces, etc, and apply his brick laying skills to oven building principles, you will get a masterpiece that works.
There have been so many posts where the poster has been disappointed with a barrel oven, but it need not be so.

Do not underrate the idea of insulation. Many times when a barrel oven owner is not happy with his oven it emerges that he, or his mason, followed some old guidelines that hit the web in earlier days.
In many of these old designs, insulation was considered unnecessary, even counter productive, and thermal mass was sort of "bigger is always better". Even when it was considered necessary to insulate, some designers had some funny ideas of what constitutes insulation.
For example, I can see how a layer of wine bottles under the hearth bricks will hold stationary air, and thus insulate, but I still fail to see how broken glass ever got a run on the field.

Many of these early designs appear to stem from earlier cob oven designs.
Now cob/adobe ovens are the ultimate in low tech, low cost DIY, and the insulation is no exception.
These ovens are the province of people who want to maybe spring for a layer of bricks for the floor, but dig all the rest of the materials from the backyard free, and are prepared to rebuild once the weather does its thing.
Not such a bad way to go - they are very quick and easy to build and very cheap.
And a bit back to earth hippy-ish.

But, if you wish permanence and reliability, it's brick or cast refractory....
I helped my mate build an oven recently. He wanted one just like mine, small, thin wall, fast to heat, but not a lot of thermal mass for retained heat baking.
Fortunately, I listened to what he wasn't saying. He wasn't saying a lot about making pizzas. I realised he really wanted a baking oven as much as a pizza oven, so the oven we built ended up bigger inside,with more thermal mass. No regrets, apart from his wife being kinda tired of all the bread he is making.

[SableSprings]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

Here's the newbie thread that was referred to in the previous reply...you'll want to look at it, fabulous references, comments, & builds.

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f2/n...res-15133.html

I had never laid a brick before starting my Pompeii style oven. I liked the versatility of this shape over the barrel style, but liked the look of the barrel. I ended up building the Pompeii dome with a barrel facade. I have loved being able to bake lots of breads, cookies, biscotti, focaccia, lasagne, manicotti, chicken, turkey, ribs, risotto and even souffles! Based on what I've seen on this forum over the last several years, you can do great things with either shape/form of oven...it's really about you being interested in cooking outside the temperature confines of the classic recipes & formulas. You end up cooking by looking at the food rather than going by the "it will take x minutes at x degrees".

You'll have a ball doing this project and there's tons of help here for you! Look at my sablesprings website noted below and check out my brief photo series on building my oven and how I've used it in the last 4+ years.

[deejayoh]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

I find I can get my oven to cooking temps in 90-120 minutes. I think the claim of getting the Premio to cooking temps in 50 minutes is probably "optimistic" to say the least. I suspect the two are within 30 minutes of each other.

What you might not have looked at yet is shipping costs for the Premio. If you have no FB dealers in your area, those are gonna be very high - they might just help you make the decision.

FWIW, build the dome is difficult but rewarding if you are inclined to that sort of work. And it's probably <1/2 the total work that goes into an oven when you consider that you need a stand, a cover of some sort, landing, etc. So there is time saved but it's not as much as you'd think in terms of the whole project. You can build a dome in a few weeks but it may take months to get the rest of the stuff done.

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

A large percentage of builders here (like me) had no prior masonry experience but just jumped in after reading through the FB oven plans and the newbie's survey list Mike referenced above. The advantage of building it yourself means you control every aspect of its design and ultimately, its performance.

Since you are chef-trained, it might be worth looking at building an oven that can cook more than the 90sec pizza.

[boerwarrior]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

If I want to cook 1-3 pizzas for my family I can get my small Pompeii (32 inches) to temperature in 75 minutes. Not exaggerating - this is how long it takes to clear my dome and get great pizzas. The only problem is that my oven is not saturated (with heat) after 75 minutes. That takes longer. Last year I had a pizza party and cooked about 50 pizzas - but I heated the oven for about 4 hours prior to starting and it held up well.

[david s]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

As a rough guide it takes about one hour per inch of wall thickness to get hot enough to cook pizzas.

[deejayoh]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

As a rough guide it takes about one hour per inch of wall thickness to get hot enough to cook pizzas.

I'm not sure whose rough guide that is, but it is not any that I would use. Most ovens on this forum (including mine) are 4.5" thick at the wall. Applying that measure it would take 4.5 hours to heat a standard Pompeii. I can easily saturate my oven in 1/3 that amount of time.

[cobblerdave]

Re: Pompeii oven heating time

Gudday
Depends on what you want. 1 and 1/2 hours will give you an oven that will produce 6 pizza easy. If I wanted to do the commercial thing and produce pizza continuously with a live flame to replenish the heat loss , I would do the four hour burn.
In saying that I'm more Likely to do 6 pizza at most and if I need the oven in the days after a small burn to bring it up to what I need.
Regards dave