First mid-winter pizzas and oven was quite wet

[MarkJerling]

First mid-winter pizzas and oven was quite wet. It's my own fault, I've had rain blow in from the door side. I need to make an outer door to better weather protect the oven, or simply throw a tarp over the door arch during winter.

Fire took a good 5 hours to heat the oven and it was nowhere near "normal" high temperature. As we have a few days of clear weather forecast, I've been doing a few more fires to dry everything out. Happy to report that things are back to normal. Oven is dry, and once again, getting up to really good hot temperature.

In other new, I've made my first batch of pizzas using Caputto flour, having found out we can get the real stuff in New Zealand. I'm amazed. Did a 24 hour cold ferment, 62% hydration. Simply wow! I'm impressed.

[MarkJerling]

I've been testing some things. Have been keeping the oven door opening covered with a tarpaulin. Oven is staying nicely dry now.
I've also done a few tests: A small fire, over 6 hours, heats the oven far more effectively than a large fire over 4 hours. And, it uses, probably, half the wood!

[Gulf]

I whole heartedly agree with what I call a “storm door” for the exterior arch. I have been recommending them for years. Like the inner arch, a reveal, allows for an easy install.

Keep on “keeping on” with the experiments. That is the most fun for me. Whether it be firing times or time and temperatures for cooking. You will probably find after you are sure that your oven is completely dry that the dome clearing time will improve greatly.

After that, the dryness of the wood is the next variable that I have found that can figure in to the final results. I’m betting that you will eventually cut both of your stated times in half

[MarkJerling]

Thanks for your comments Gulf. Ah, yes, wood! I'm now burning a mix of dry pine and cherry to get things going and then I switch to olive once the fire is going well. Dry olive wood works well. Mind you, any dry wood works well, even gum. I also have some plum but that's going to need another year or two to dry.

There's a fair bit of thermal mass in the night store heater bricks so I wonder if that slows down my heat-up time?

Of course, I should just make pizzas every day because, if I made a fire the day before, it takes hardly no time to get it back up to pizza temperature! Maybe I should just keep it going permanently! LOL