Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

[Yahoo-Archive]

hi stanley/dianne ...

i don't have my insulation on yet but ...

i have a pompeii oven with*a 2.5 inch firebrick floor on top of 2 inches of concrete on top of a slab with 2.5 inches of vermiculite/cement. i have almost no mortar on the exterior of the dome giving me effectively a dome thickness of 4.7 inches.

our*first two attempts at pizza produced*pizzas which were good but didn't have the crispy crust i was looking for.**(however, some garlic we roasted was perfect). two weekends ago on the third try*i left the kids alone with the fire and told them to throw some wood on the fire if it looked like it needed it. being kids, they then proceeded to load up the oven with a forest's worth of wood. after the inferno went down, we cooked our pizza and*they were*perfect !! the oven was still warm (maybe 90 degrees F)*12 hours later.*

as james has noted, you can't get the oven too hot for pizza. i don't have much to base my opinion on but i think that roasting meats is going to be fine in my oven as long as i do it "on the way down" and with no door so as to allow me to regulate the heat with a little wood every now and then. it seems that by controlling the amount of fire*i will be able to*get the oven where i want it with consistant results (but only time will tell).*

pictures of my oven are at*<http://www.cpsusa.com/ebay/pompeiioven.htm>www.cpsusa.com/ebay/pompeiioven.htm *

Robert

[Yahoo-Archive]

i have a 2.25 inch floor;
i plan to put on about 4*inches of insulation (even with the kids' science experiment [can nuclear fusion be achieved with wood?]) the outside of the dome wasn't blazing hot.

Robert

[sacwoodpusher]

Re: Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

as james has noted, you can't get the oven too hot for pizza. i don't have much to base my opinion on but i think that roasting meats is going to be fine in my oven as long as i do it "on the way down" and with no door so as to allow me to regulate the heat with a little wood every now and then. it seems that by controlling the amount of fire*i will be able to*get the oven where i want it with consistant results (but only time will tell).*

I got my oven too hot for pizza once. I did it before I got an infrared thermometer, but I am pretty sure I had the oven up to around 1100 degrees F everywhere.

All I can say is that I slid the pizza into the oven and it turned black INSTANTLY.

I decided thereafter to never cook without the infrared thermometer. Like a good meat thermometer, and infrared thermometer takes the guesswork out of it. Sure, I know NOW that as the temp goes close to 700-800 degrees F, the oven cleans itself......you can see the bricks go from black back to cream color......but don't guess when starting out.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

.but don't guess when starting out.

Seeing as how the thread is 7 years old I doubt they are stating out..

[Aussie Pete]

Re: Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

maybe there should be an automatic delete of threads after a certain period...say..5 years
Is Yahoo-archive still around??
he's probably built 2 or 3 by now

[mrchipster]

Re: Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

maybe there should be an automatic delete of threads after a certain period...say..5 years
Is Yahoo-archive still around??
he's probably built 2 or 3 by now

I do not believe in automatic deletes because there is still some valuable information in those old posts most notable What Not to Do!!!

The last post by Yahoo-Archive was in 2006 so he is either lurking, gave up, or is like others just enjoying his oven.

Hopefully it is the latter and he will jump back in some day and tell us all about the great parties and foods he has been making over the years.

I wish my oven had been completed 6 years ago, I would have eaten better for all that time.

Chip

[dmun]

Re: Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

The last post by Yahoo-Archive was in 2006

The yahoo archive consists of posts from the groups pre-forum existence as a yahoo groups mail list. It contains some junk, but so do some of the new posts.