The Shy Underside

[dhs]

Yeah, the bottom will burn before the top is done. This is especially noticeable on the first few pies or if the oven sits for a long time. If I can get a number of pies going, it hits a groove and is a pleasure to work with. Problem is in backyard bakes for a few friends the pies are few and far between. Not a huge deal but makes for a dance when doing more than one pie.

As far as the mushroom comment. Not sure if that is serious or not but I would disagree based on the temps at play here. I am not pouring water onto the floor, just a wet rag. I would seriously doubt any water was migrating into the bricks and not converting to steam.

[shuboyje]

Like the others, I never had this issue with my old oven, which like yours was a home built fire brick low dome oven.  If anything I had the opposite issue of too much top heat if the oven sat and was a bit damp.  The toppings would began to brown before the bottom was done.

[JConk007]

DHS,
Desribe your heat up technique please. I aske because I used to heat big fire in middle push to one side an start cooking yes a few first bottoms would torch up, lots of work. Now I heat with the center fire only until floor reaches 700 or so this takes constant checking, then I move the fire to the side and finish full oven heat up (until it all turns white) from the side. floor temp around 800-850 to start walls 900+ and dome off the scale,  but most pies came out better this way, no black bottoms or constant spin lift ...  I only brush too no wet rag. Just my new proceedure
John

[dhs]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I am going to not use the wet rag for a few bakes and see if there is any difference (related to this or not). Some things are a product of habit and this would be one for sure. It doesn't make sense to me but that does not mean it is not doing something.

The heat up procedure. I do what I call a 'lazy' heat up. I say lazy in that I probably fire 4 hours before the first pie but never push the fire very hard. The oven is not ready till close to the end of the 4 hours. It has become my standard procedure, again out of habit now, but the original reason was this allowed me to heat up with the least amount of smoke at any one time. I do heat up in the center till the oven is white all around then push over to the side. I normally will start baking pies pretty close to that time.  JKonk007, I think another obvious thing to try is to get the IR gun out and give your heat up technique a whirl. Monitoring the floor temps a bit would be a good idea for sure.