alternative to wood

[101catpawz]

Has anyone tried using natural lump coal? No, not charcoal briquettes. I wonder if it would get the oven hot enough or have any drawbacks. I have a hard time getting good woods so I'm fishing for alternatives to use in the pompai oven. Has anyone gotten gas to work and if so how does one install it or what would one use? I see that my local restaurant uses gas in their bee hive oven but it's way too big and complicated for me. I'm certainly up for suggestions. Thanks.

[Neil2]

I have used coal and it works OK. Locally it is more expensive than wood. You want a "low sulfur" coal -which most domestic use coal is.

"I have a hard time getting good woods"

Any old wood will do, as long as it is well seasoned.

[texassourdough]

They actually heat ovens with bundles of twigs in wood-short areas around the world so you don't even need "wood" to heat the oven though it is good to have actual wood to burn while actually cooking pizza (so you get a curtain of fire going up the dome to enhance the radiative heating.

While there are people on the listserve that use gas you will find it discouraged for the dome can trap gas if there is a leak and lighting the oven can be....exciting.

Good Luck!
Jay

[Archena]

Yup.

Grimaldi's Pizzeria. The pizza that made the Brooklyn Bridge famous.

Most New York pizzerias were originally coal fired. The remaining ones today were grandfathered in when NY outlawed the use of coal. If you do a search you will find quite a number of coal fired pizzerias.