Opinions please on this steel portable oven

[ideaswoman]

On eBay a seller has three different models; two without fire bricks, one with.

Here s the one with fire bricks LARGE WOOD FIRED PIZZA OVEN, BBQ, STOVE HAS HEAT BRICKS (eBay item 350423259315 end time 23-Dec-10 20:00:05 AEDST) : Home

I would love to read your comments as they are selling for around $700 AUD and without the fire bricks are around $300 - $400 AUD.

Merry Christmas to this great community!

Gayle
Australia

[Wiley]

And a Merry Christmas to you as well :-)

Comments and opinions, well what this seller is selling isn't really the same wood fired ovens we are usually discussing here. Sure it has some firebricks but basically it is not relying on retained heat in the same manner/scale as our Pompeii style. I looked but had no luck finding the weight. Weight would be a good indicator of mass and mass is what is heated in our WFOs and what holds/stores our heat. It would appear the mass for retained heat is the bricks in the hearth and the top is only sheet metal and insulation. I can't imagine a 90 second pizza coming out of this oven, it might bake more like a conventional oven (ie: ten to twenty or more minute pizza). Nor can I image a slow cooked pork shoulder or turkey coming out of this oven. And bread, hard to imagine enough stored heat in those few bricks to bake several loaves of bread.

The seller is a wholesale seller and interested in moving stuff from his ebay storefront. And lots of variety in the stuff he's selling. Not like he was a retailer of wood fired ovens much less that he built them or had them built. I looked at the seller's profile in hopes of finding someone who had purchased one of these (won auction, whatever) but had no luck the ebay feedback site doesn't list the purchases, all listed as "private" sales. I figured if you could find someone who owned one of these you could find out just what it can and cannot do. However, as his sales are all listed as "private" and so one cannot find someone who bought for one of these. That I personally think is a questionable practice, if someone is a honest, forthright seller he should have no problem with my wanting to talk with previous patrons and buyers of the stuff he sells. He probably would say he's "protecting" the "privacy" of his clients..which I could understand if he was selling sex toys or some such, otherwise it's a ruse to keep buyers in the dark (IMHO).

Just my 2 cents worth, hope it was some help,
Wiley

[mn8tr]

Totally different animal from the oven builds on this forum. Anything you cook in a WFO that you build with your own hands will be the best you ever had. And if it is not you will say that it is... ; )