In article ,
"Andy Phillips" wrote:

Hi,
I have a pizza oven made from refractory cement (see
http://www.purimachos.demon.co.uk/pizza.htm). This works OK, but the walls
are not thick enough to retain much heat - therefore, having heated the
oven with a wood fire and raked it out, it's only possible to cook about two
pizzas before it's cooled down. I'd like to be able to cook at least four
pizzas and maybe some bread afterwards. I therefore need to thicken the wall
to increase the heat capacity - I thought by adding at least one course of
bricks around the sides and top of the oven, followed by an inch or so of
render. Question is, do I need to use special heat-proof bricks (eg
firebricks) and cement, or can I get away with normal house bricks and
mortar? I'm concerned that the mortar and render will crack - when in use,
the outer wall of the oven gets too hot to touch for more than an instant -
I would guess about 100-140C.
Any advice appreciated.
Andy



They suggest you can leave the fire on and cook with it that way. This
is actually what is done in all Neapolitan pizza ovens anyway (live fire
cooking). That would be the easiest thing to try first.

See the Forno Bravo site for exhaustive discussion on all aspects of
wood fired ovens. See for example

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

and go to their forums

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/

Roland