Fires Firing Your Oven Discuss Fires in the Oven Management forums; Some neat pics my niece took of the fires! Thought they were good for the "How big is big" questions! ...

[Dutchoven]

Some neat pics my niece took of the fires! Thought they were good for the "How big is big" questions!
Dutch

[gjbingham]

Nice pics Dutch. How long does it take to fire your oven from ambient (assuming it ever gets that cold).

[Dutchoven]

Thanks George!
We usually allow for about 3 hours of a good burn...including startup if we are doing pizza and it is really ready a bit before then...sometimes we have to let the floor cool a bit even. For multiple loads of bread maybe 90 minutes more and then let it soak and stabilize...a total of about 6 hours or so...which gives us 375F+ for about 8 or 9 hours. I think the coldest we went from at startup was in the 30's after a week of quite cool temps...it was for bread and it took about 5 hours of active burning
Best
Dutch

[gjbingham]

Soak and stabilize? Whazzat?
Six hours from start to the first load?

I'd love to have a bread oven too. Baking and selling artisan breads is really intriguing, but the getting up at 3 AM is definitely not for me!

[Dutchoven]

Don't have to be up at 3...I just fire it overnight...load the bugger with the usual amount of firewood...spark it up, check on it once to be sure it's burning good and then off to slumberland until about 6...clean out and bake in an hour
Dutch

Originally Posted by gjbingham

Soak and stabilize? Whazzat?
Six hours from start to the first load?

I'd love to have a bread oven too. Baking and selling artisan breads is really intriguing, but the getting up at 3 AM is definitely not for me!

[edschmidt]

When you fire at night do you get flames shooting out of the chimney, I LOVE when that happens.

[Dutchoven]

I try not to let it that SCARY! I have at times gotten a nice orange glow out of the top though...scary fires can be fun
Best
Dutch

Originally Posted by edschmidt

When you fire at night do you get flames shooting out of the chimney, I LOVE when that happens.

[gjbingham]

Geeze, fire out the top of the chimney? I've got an eight foot chimney. I hope I never see that!

[Dutchoven]

That is when your wife says..."That can't be safe..."
I hope you never do...with chimney that tall you should never have that problem though...our chimney is short
Dutch

[RTflorida]

I've had flames coming out of my spark arrester cap, at the end of my 4' run of Duravent a couple of times.....thought I was going to burn down the palm tree next to the oven and the oak behind.....I've since scaled back to flames being pulled up the pipe...not out the top. BIG BIG FIRE is REALLY REALLY COOL. During every fire.....the little kid comes out and whats to play Backdraft (the movie)........that little is me, amazed with fire.

RT