Masonry oven
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
A masonry oven, colloquially
known as a brick oven or stone oven, is an oven consisting of a baking chamber made of fireproof brick, concrete, stone, clay, or cob. Though
traditionally wood-fired, coal-fired ovens were common in the 19th century, and modern
masonry ovens are often fired with natural gas
or even electricity. Modern masonry ovens are closely associated with artisanal
bread and pizza, but in the past they were used for any cooking task
involving baking.
History
Masonry ovens are used in the Persian Gulf
region for the preparation of the traditional khubz bread.
In India, tandooris
traditionally clay ovens, although these days modern electrically fired
tandoors are available. The open-topped tandoor is a transitional design
between the earth oven and the Roman-plan masonry oven.
The traditional direct-fired masonry
design is often called a "Roman" or "black" oven and dates
in Western culture to at least the Roman Republic.
It is known as a black oven because the smoke from the wood used as fuel
sometimes collects as soot on the roof of the oven. Such ovens were in wide use
throughout medieval Europe and were often built to serve entire communities (cf
the banal ovens
of France, which were often owned by the local government and whose operators
charged a fee to oven users). Such ovens became popular in the Americas during
the colonial era and are still in wide use in artisanal bakeries and pizzerias,
as well as some restaurants featuring pizzas and baked dishes. Descendants include the beehive ovens
of the colonial United States and the Quebec ovens based on the designs of the
banal ovens of France.
In the precolumbian Americas,
similar ovens were often made of clay or adobe and are sometimes referred to by the Spanish term horno
(meaning "oven").
Technology
The function of a masonry oven is to
trap and radiate heat from a fire, either built within the oven itself or in a
firebox that vents into the oven (a white oven); smoke is vented through the
front of the oven, either directly to the outside or through a chimney
immediately above the oven door. The front-loading masonry design is somewhat
more heat-efficient than an open-topped oven like a tandoor, allowing
the use of stored heat and low fires for long bakes instead of requiring a live
fire at all times.
Masonry ovens are generally built
with fire-resistant materials like firebrick
or clay, or even directly cast from refractory
cement. Those
designed for bread use are generally quite heavily built to store several
hours' worth of heat after completely burning a load of wood, while those
designed for pizza or other live-fire cooking techniques can have thinner
construction. Generally, a properly-built Roman-plan oven is roughly
egg-shaped, with the ceiling of the oven constructed as an arch over the baking
surface. The front entrance is ideally approximately 63%±5% the height of the
top of the oven ceiling; too high and heat is lost, too low and the oven does
not heat completely.
The "white oven" is a
somewhat more complex design that pipes heat in from an external firebox
without routing the smoke from the fire through the oven. A compromise design
known as the gueulard in France combines aspects of both internal and
external-fired models.
Modern-designed masonry ovens
sometimes bear little resemblance to their forebears, sometimes having only a
concrete deck (similar to a pizza stone)
inside a more conventional oven exterior. Such devices are primarily used in
commercial settings, though tabletop models are available.[1]
Uses
S
imulation
It is possible to get some of the
benefits of a masonry oven without constructing a full oven. The most common
method is the stoneware pizza stone,
which stores heat while the oven is preheating and transmits it directly to the
bottom of the pizza. Bread and meat can be cooked in a type of covered ceramic casserole
dish known variously as a cloche, a Schlemmertopf (brand name), or the like.
Most expensive is a ceramic or stoneware oven liner that provides many of the
benefits of a cloche without restricting the baker to one size of pan.
It is sometimes possible to cook
bread on a grill to simulate the use of radiant heat in a masonry oven;
while this is generally reserved for flatbreads
and pizzas, a few recipes for loaf breads are designed to use a grill as well,
with or without a masonry or ceramic heating surface.[3]
See
also
References
1.
·
Cookery equipment manufacturer Cuisinart
sells a tabletop "brick oven" that uses a pizza stone-like lining to
store heat for baking.
·
·
"Rules of the VPN Association". Verace Pizza Napoletana Association. 1998. Retrieved
2008-09-28.
External
links
- West Hartford Brick Oven: Wood fired oven construction over 4 months
- Build a bread oven: Details about 2 constructions: a clay oven and a tiles oven
- Canadian University with an Alan Scott Wood Fired Brick Oven and courses included in the curriculum
- Wood fired ovens: Information related to building, use and cooking
- Outdoor pizza oven: Guide about construction of outdoor brick ovens
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