Newbie with a small oven!

[leighm7]

Hello all,

I'm Leigh and I am brand new to the forum. I hope you are all well.

I have already built quite a small oven and am after people's experienced views on it please.

I have a dome of internal height and width of 17" and 20" respectively. Small yes.

The door is 9" high by 15" wide. Roughly keeping to the 62 -64% ratio guideline.

I read lots of advice before completing this project and one of the reasons I kept it so small is because I read a lot about a 10" pizza being ideal due to the temperature within the oven.

I also didn't want to have it take over the garden.

What do people think on these sizes?

I haven't actually tried to cook anything yet but it is practically finished (bar astetics) and seems to be holding the heat from the little 'drying out' fires I have had.

Thanks!

[cobblerdave]

G'day

A Small oven comes with its advantages as well as its disadvantages. It takes more time to make a pizza than to cook one, so cooking one at a time is common. A small oven needs less wood to get it to pizza temp. But being small it can only have a small fire so it will still need about an hour and half to two hours to get properly to heat saturation and pizza temps same as a larger oven.
To cook pizza successfully you need a fire with flames to keep the heat up to cook the top of the pizza and replenish the heat on the oven hearth between pizza. The pizza ends up being close to the fire. There is a very good chance of launching a pizza directly into the fire. Being so close it can also burn the edge of the pizza closest to the flame. To overcome this a simple heat shield can be constructed of a piece of bent flat metal. Prop it next next to the fire as a heat shield and a barrier to the fire so you can keep your hearth clean.
Hope this helps, post some pics of your pizza , and oven, we all like " pizza porn"
Regards dave