Re: dome versus barrel oven

Posted by Rado

In Reply to: dome versus barrel oven posted by g-man

Top wood fired pizza done
in rectangular barrel dome.

First read this article I wrote: Dome versus Barrel dome etc. Exactly the same wood fired pizzas, as in round dome, can be easily done in the rectangular barrel dome. Have a look in meals photo gallery. Construction planning depends on what type of cooking gets done in the future oven, and on the requirement how long the oven should hold-stable cooking heat from a single firing. One oven can drop temperature in under one hour, other oven will keep temperature well for five hours and then still have the drying temperature for more then ten hours after the cooking time capability.

You could start to create arches right from the hearth surface. For the fire, it is good to keep sidewalls at least 15cm to 23cm high - that's 6" to 9" (from that height rectangular-dome arches start.) For home sized ovens, Vault height (measurement from hearth surface to dome ceiling) is great when 41cm or 16" (can go to 43cm or 17" but higher ceiling is not really needed - lower gives better steam concentration as well.) And the door height is 63% of the vault height, more on building wood fired ovens construction details.

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Posted by g-man:
"I am getting ready to make a brick oven, i have researched this extensively.I read articles that barrel ovens are great for cooking and breads, but dome ovens are the best for pizza, obviously the barrel is much easier to construct, would it be beneficial to create as much dome as possible in the barrel roof, are there any minimum or maximum ratios for dome heights? Would increasing the arch in the barrel roof and rounding the corners off be beneficial? Is there any type of ratio of oven size to roof height?"

Dome ovens vs. barrel type wood fired brick ovens - how they perform and what goes into building.