Saturated oven

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Saturated oven

I tend to preheat my oven the day before. I give it a medium firing and shut the insulated door, on bake day I fire the oven again. Now I use thermocouples to know when to pull out my coals (Quite handy for bread bakers). Being that you don't have thermocouples if you can figure a way to get a temperature reading on the outside oven bricks and inside oven bricks ...then average the two temperatures. This will give you your target saturation temperature for baking bread.

After the second firing pull your coals and shut the door and let it rest for at least two hours...Then swab the floor shut the door and give it 30 minutes to recover temperature before you bake.

Hope that helps Faith

The problem is that I am not planning my baking, usually I deside the same day, due to work and kids.

Where did you placed you thermocouples?

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Saturated oven

Thank you all for your helpful and fast responses!

So IR thermometers that test's only surface temps are any good at baking.
Is there a way to get an actual reading of baking temp with my IR thermometer, after i close the door and wait for equalization?
Does the oven get's the same temp at the floor and the top of the dome after a 2 hours with the door on?


One thing is for sure...the mother of all knowledge is repeating...and re-firing!

[brickie in oz]

Re: Saturated oven

A brick is a brick is a brick.

Bricks of the same density will heat in the same manner no matter what style of oven you build....

[TropicalCoasting]

Re: Saturated oven

I don't get the differences that my oven has from a pompei.
Isn't pompei a style structure for wood ovens?
It's not a barrel oven but a round with the front arch holding the chimney.

I was referring to this and whether the cold spots or heat transfer and therefore saturation was any different between the 2 types

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/2/barrell-vs-dome-design-1441-2.html#post10704

[Faith In Virginia]

Re: Saturated oven

Now that we understand saturated... dimitrisbizakis, as you now see bread baking is very different from pizza baking. So how you heat your oven is also different. Once you get past the basic stuff such as having a fully cured oven with proper insulation and want to get to the brass tacks of heating here is the deal. The oven bricks will transfer heat from the oven side of the bricks to the outer oven side at a very specific rate. So time is the big factor here.

I tend to preheat my oven the day before. I give it a medium firing and shut the insulated door, on bake day I fire the oven again. Now I use thermocouples to know when to pull out my coals (Quite handy for bread bakers). Being that you don't have thermocouples if you can figure a way to get a temperature reading on the outside oven bricks and inside oven bricks ...then average the two temperatures. This will give you your target saturation temperature for baking bread.

After the second firing pull your coals and shut the door and let it rest for at least two hours...Then swab the floor shut the door and give it 30 minutes to recover temperature before you bake.

Hope that helps Faith

[Tscarborough]

Re: Saturated oven

Saturated means no temperature gradient between the face and the back side of the oven mass. It doesn't matter what that temp is, as long as it is equal through the mass, it is saturated. You can burn to have it saturated at 500 degrees, and that won't take 5 hours. To saturate it to 800+ will.

[mrchipster]

Re: Saturated oven

I decided to put it a different way,

Saturated heat is the heat that an oven will maintain for an extended period of time given a well insulated door is in place, and enought oven mass and other insulation to maintain the heat. This of course depends on the saturation temperature. The numbers for this post are in F.

Assuming a 50 degree range....A saturated oven at 700 degrees may only stay in that range for a few hours, an oven at 500 may stay there for 4 - 6 hours, a 300 degree oven may exceed 12 hours and a 200 degree oven over 24 hours.

All the above would be saturated but at different high temps and for differing cooking purposes.

As indicated before an oven that has not been saturated or is poorly insulted will not be able to maintain a tight heat range for much time at all. There are many posts by people that are at pizza temps in the evening and are just above 200 the next morning.

An unsaturated oven will achieve a high inner surface temperature and a significantly lower inner (midbrick) and or external temperature thus causing a fast cool down of the interior surface via the wicking of heat into deeper parts of the brick and also surface heat loss.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Saturated oven

Dimitri,
If your oven is fairly new it may not be properly dry. If this is the case it could be the reason the temp drops off so fast. The remedy is to keep using it and the performance will improve.

I thing I need to burn more wood for now...

[Tscarborough]

Re: Saturated oven

A fully saturated oven, door on and allowed to equalize will be pretty close to the same temp all over. Obviously after cooking 10#s of wet dough the temp will drop, mainly on the floor. Door it back up and let it equalize again, and you should be able to get 2-3 batches out of a fully saturated oven.

[david s]

Re: Saturated oven

Dimitri,
If your oven is fairly new it may not be properly dry. If this is the case it could be the reason the temp drops off so fast. The remedy is to keep using it and the performance will improve.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Saturated oven

It depends upon what you want your final cooking temp to be. Until the mass is fully saturated, heat will continue to be drawn away from the face until it equalizes. That means if you are shooting for bread temps, you may only have to fire for an hour and a half. If you are planning on cooking a bunch of pizza at Neapolitan temps, you are looking at 5+ hours minimum for saturation, although you do not really need a fully heat soaked oven to cook pizzas.

So a fully saturated oven can have many temps, the main difference is that the longer you burn your oven the higher temps will be kept on full saturation?

After cooking with my 2-hour firing if I then put my insulated door on - my oven temperature is still > 350 degrees 3 days later. So I am really not sure what I would gain by firing for more than 2 hours?

My main problem isn't pizza, there you can trough 2 logs and get things fixed, but when i remove the coals and the bread is in the oven "the river has started and can't turn back"!
The same happens to me but the moment i load 4 1kg loafs at let's say 210 C the temp is getting eaten by the bread and it drops at least 70 c!
It's sure that the thermal mass is ok (10cm thick) and the insulation is good to, i guess it need more firing than 2 hours.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Saturated oven

Yours isnt a pompei though ????
Does that make a difference on saturation time
and are the numbers people talking about for a fully insulated pompei?

I don't get the differences that my oven has from a pompei.
Isn't pompei a style structure for wood ovens?
It's not a barrel oven but a round with the front arch holding the chimney.

But I think dimitris bizakis was getting at a different question: how long does it take to get a substantial amount of heat into the bricks, such that one will have enough retained heat to bake bread and do other stuff. This is longer than the 1-1.5 hours that it takes to clear the dome and bake a couple pizzas, but less than 5 hours, for sure. I'd give you a number, but I'm still figuring that out for my oven .

You understand me very well m8!

[boerwarrior]

Re: Saturated oven

I am also a little confused by the question and answers, however I also defer to Tscarborough and Brickie who are two of the best experts on this forum!

I will say, however, that for my 32" Pompeii, I can fire "slowly" for 2 hours and then comfortably cook up to around 12-15 pizzas one at a time with very little loss of heat. (I keep a few pieces of kindling lit on each side - adds a little heat, a little smoke and also adds some light!)

The reason I say "slowly" is that if I only want to cook 1-2 pizzas I can clear my dome in a little over an hour which works fine for a quick meal. But I can definitely tell that one hour is not enough to get any 'saturation' and the oven will 'stabilize' (get cooler but heat gets more even) after a quick fire.

After cooking with my 2-hour firing if I then put my insulated door on - my oven temperature is still > 350 degrees 3 days later. So I am really not sure what I would gain by firing for more than 2 hours? My apologies if I have only added to the confusion!

[Tscarborough]

Re: Saturated oven

It depends upon what you want your final cooking temp to be. Until the mass is fully saturated, heat will continue to be drawn away from the face until it equalizes. That means if you are shooting for bread temps, you may only have to fire for an hour and a half. If you are planning on cooking a bunch of pizza at Neapolitan temps, you are looking at 5+ hours minimum for saturation, although you do not really need a fully heat soaked oven to cook pizzas.

[rsandler]

Re: Saturated oven

For fully saturated I fire my oven for about 6 hours, its usually for a pizza party..

If you have a Pompeii oven you need to plan on firing 5-8 hours to saturate 4" of masonry, at least.

I think these responses, while technically correct, are not getting at what the original questioner was asking.

Getting an oven fully saturated, in the sense that the bricks have as much heat as they can hold given the insulation on the other side, takes quite a bit of firing. If brickie and Tscar say it's 5-8 hours, that's probably right--these guys know their stuff, and I don't think heating times are any different for a vault oven vs. a Pompeii if the walls are the same thickness. If you're doing a big pizza party and want to quickly bake 40+ pizzas, firing this much is a good idea.

But I think dimitrisbizakis was getting at a different question: how long does it take to get a substantial amount of heat into the bricks, such that one will have enough retained heat to bake bread and do other stuff. This is longer than the 1-1.5 hours that it takes to clear the dome and bake a couple pizzas, but less than 5 hours, for sure. I'd give you a number, but I'm still figuring that out for my oven .