The oven door....

[two_larsens]

Hello all,

I've split my questions in two, since they have little to do with eachother - the other being the question of Fire Clay.
For the last month, I've been following the recipe for constructing a Pompeii oven, and am about to do start the dome - that having a 36" floorspace. Now, I don't see anything about oven doors, and was wondering how that normally is made. Is it cast Fire Cement, or something lined with steel? How does one open it? How is it attached?
This has been a really fun project, and I'm trying to do it right with no second-guessing...

Thanks for any replies.

H. Larsen

[dmun]

Re: The oven door....

There are several styles of door. For most uses, a simple wooden door works fine for retained heat baking, if you are patient enough to let the oven cool down below 500 degrees f. before you put it in. There are any number of variations on this theme: some members have build elaborate custom cast metal doors with hinges and rope seals such as you would find in a wood stove. There are insulated doors, useful for those who want to keep the heat up between daily firings.

There is a metal fire door that aims a blast of air at the bottom of the fire, and tilts forward to the edge of the vent. This is especially useful for getting a fire going in cold weather.

Of course, if you are just cooking pizza with a fire in the oven, you don't need a door at all.