Does Size Matter?

[Fishman]

With the forum hack, my post and the quoted DavidS post has been lost so I will try to re-post as best I can.

Davis had posted, and I quoted, that his ovens were ~24" cooking floors have a faster heat up time and are more economical in use of wood to heat.

I asked what are the trade-offs/negatives of a smaller oven size (other than smaller opening for large roasts and pots)? What are the benefits of a larger oven (other than larger roasts and pots fitting through the door)? As a home user that will likely never need to cook more than a handful of pizzas or an average family sized turkey, is there a benefit in going big vs smaller?

[david s]

I’m unapologetic about being a fan of small ovens as I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
Let’s go through some.
First, my ovens are 21” internal and with 2” floor and 2” thick dome still takes the same amount of time to get to pizza temp as a larger oven. The reason for this is simply that the chamber being smaller means a smaller fire. Because of the mathematics of volume which goes up cubed a small increase of diameter means a huge increase in volume.
Advantages: much lower fuel consumption, far less materials used, far less building labour/time required, far less resultant weight and far less resultant cost, more frequent use.
Disadvantages: higher heat loss from oven mouth, restricted size of roasts, generally restricted to single pizza cooking, oven size envy (personally I don’t suffer from this one, I’m happy with a small one)

[Fishman]

Thanks for the thoughts David. I didn’t remember that the smaller oven takes the same amount of time to heat.
If your internal diameter is 21”, that gives you a radius of 10.5”. What are your door dimensions? Do you hold to the 63% rule with a 6.6” high opening? And how wide?

[Fishman]

I’m unapologetic about being a fan of small ovens as I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
Let’s go through some.
First, my ovens are 21” internal and with 2” floor and 2” thick dome

What are your door opening dimensions?

[Hattori-Hanzo]

david s little bump if you see this David I would also like to know what mouth opening size your 21" ovens use.

I'm not far off planning for mine on a 21"oven

I was hoping to go for around 400mmx 250mm so I can get larger pots and racks in.
I can adjust my dome height to suit as I'm not doing a traditional dome.

[Petter]

The opening is 15.5" x 6.5"

[Fishman]

Thank you Petter

[Petter]

Welcome, I found a post from 2011 :-)

[david s]

david s little bump if you see this David I would also like to know what mouth opening size your 21" ovens use.

I'm not far off planning for mine on a 21"oven

I was hoping to go for around 400mmx 250mm so I can get larger pots and racks in.
I can adjust my dome height to suit as I'm not doing a traditional dome.

My oven mouth is 400 x 160mm and the outer decorative arch 440 x 180mm
It is fine for general use and provides good access, but the height limits a really tall roast. It will just fit a 4kg Turkey. Because the floor is very hot, for roasting I like to place a rack in the baking dish so the roast is not sitting on the bottom of the baking pan. I also pour in 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of wine. When pulling the roast out there’s the perfect amount left for gravy and the caramelisation on the pan hasn’t burnt on too much. Just slow roasted a cheap corned beef roast last night for 4 hours. It was outstanding.