All things being equal Newbie Forum Discuss All things being equal in the Good Background Information forums; James - I read with great interest your analysis of wood vs. gas, etc. Being a "newbie" and just started ...

[LLArts]

James -

I read with great interest your analysis of wood vs. gas, etc. Being a "newbie" and just started out on this forum (and still in "dream stage" for planning an oven...) I was wondering about air supply to the dome oven/fire.

Have you any experience or thoughts about putting a variable air inlet at the side of the dome - flush to the oven floor, to get air direct to the fire? The reason I ask, is that I think (speculating now) that if you cook not only at the opposite side (of the fire) in the dome, but also in-line with the opening, you would get a cold-air wash over the food.
Also with a side-inlet, you could block the front opening and still have the fire going, possibly maintaining higher heat with less wood consumed (assuming that you choke the air properly so you don't get a blast furnace)???

Any thoughts/comments?

/Lars

[lwood]

Wow, I feel like i have a masters in wood fired bread making. And "emissivity" my gosh, I haven't heard that word since chem eng heat transfer class, had to go back and look it up.

That's a lot to digest, but I can't wait to experience it for myself, thanks.
John

[dmun]

Have you any experience or thoughts about putting a variable air inlet at the side of the dome - flush to the oven floor, to get air direct to the fire?

I can't think of a better way to blow ash all over your food. It's not generally considered a good idea to have ANY holes inside your dome at all: No ash slots, no air intakes, no vents from auxiliary fireplaces or smokers, no chimneys at the top of the dome. You're trying to build a highly insulated brick chamber to collect, reflect, and concentrate heat. Poking holes in it is counterproductive.

[lwalper]

I don't know, but it seems to me that food cooked in a wood fired oven comes with mostly anectodotal and subjective evidence that "it's better"—and I don't doubt it one bit. The placebo effect is very real. There may also be something to the slightly smoke enhanced flavor of baking with a fire actually buring in the cooking space. If the fire is extinguished/removed is there a flavor/baking difference between "white" ovens and "black" ovens?—dome vs. tunnel (with and without retained fires).

The notion that there is more "humidity" in a WFO (or masonry vs. steel) is probably bunk based more on what "I think" is happening than on science.

I'm no engineer, but it's my understanding that (as a general rule of thumb) relative humidity (assuming everything else remains the same - including vessel pressure and the preservation of absolute moisture) will drop by a factor of two (2) for every 20°F rise in temperature. With that in mind, an oven operating at 700°F has a relative humidity bordering on zero, whether the oven is constructed of brick or steel. I don't think I recall seeing anyone measure the actual air temperature in the oven? All we typically get are surface temps and "practice till you figure out how your oven actually performs."

Since I'm in the early (very early) stages of constuction and all I've really done is read and tried to digest the available info, all this may just be blowing through my hat. Ahh well, construction pics to come—when the weather warms up a bit (it's too cold to work concrete).