Do You Cook Directly on the Firebrick? Other options?

[pizzagary]

I reached out to the place where I buy my medium-duty firebricks from and asked if they know if the firebricks I'm using are safe to cook directly on. The answer I received said that while they know most people who build pizza ovens with them do cook directly on them, they are "not food rated at all".

Do you all cook directly on them? Any of you choose different materials to use as a cooking surface?

I have already laid the cooking floor with firebrick, but I could put a cooking layer (of something) on top of it. I was thinking maybe of getting some cordierite baking stone tiles and cutting them to fit in my 30-inch diameter cooking surface. So expensive though.

[JRPizza]

I think you will find that pretty much everyone that has a brick floor and cooks pizza does it directly on the floor. There are folks that use pans but that is usually for speed like when serving a large party or making gluten free crusts to avoid any contamination risks from residual flour on the cooking area.

[SableSprings]

Gary, I hate to ask this but it looks like you don't have any insulation between your cooking floor bricks and the supporting concrete top slab. Fairly critical issue if that's the case. Also having weep holes in the top slab and a mosaic tile moisture barrier/channeling beneath the insulation are very important additions if this oven will be out in the elements... especially Minnesota!

[JRPizza]

Ugh yeah, like Mike said having the floor bricks in contact with your concrete hearth will make it close to impossible to maintain proper cooking temperatures. What you want is a shell of thermal mass surrounded by insulation, so it will heat up relatively fast and cool relatively slowly.