Chimney or no chimney? Pros and cons? Design Styles, Chimneys and Finish Discuss Chimney or no chimney? Pros and cons? in the Pizza Oven Design and Installation forums; I plan to buy a Forno Bravo oven but am wondering which are better, ovens with chimneys or those without? ...

[pdn]

I plan to buy a Forno Bravo oven but am wondering which are better, ovens with chimneys or those without?

I see some Forno Bravo ovents include a chimney while others do not. Does the chimney take away from the convection cooking? What produces better cooking results? What are the pros and cons?

Thanks for any feedback

[james]

Hello PDN,

All Italian brick ovens have some sort of vent and chimney directly above the oven opening -- though there are couple of different ways of implementing it. For example, the Casa oven has the vent walls cast along with the oven dome, and you attach a vent piece on top of the vent walls, which connects to the chimney system. The Artigiano oven does not have built-in vent walls, and it uses a steel vent that you attach to the oven enclosure and connect to the chimney. The Premio (and Ristorante) ovens have a separate decorative arch/landing, where the vent is built in. There is a round opening at the top of the arch that connects to the chimney system. Each venting approach works well, so it comes more down to which oven works best for you (not the venting system). The Casa ovens are the most cost-effective and space effective, the Artigiano is seriously cool and is hand made, and the Premio has nice features and the good-looking arch/landing set. They all cook great, so I think the trade-offs tend to be more practical and visual.

Have you take an look at the Oven Selection wizard we put together? It walks users through the ovens selection process using a Q&A.

http://www.fornobravo.com/pizza_oven...on_wizard.html

Hope this helps.
James