There is a difference between charring and burning. The best temperature for this oven, and that is floor temperature, measured with a laser thermometer is 625 F. Great pizzas were made before laser thermometers. An Italian friend of mine showed me how to get the temperature right when I built my backyard oven using flour. Take a pinch, and throw it in on the floor. If it quickly turns black, the oven is too hot. If it quickly turns brown, it is just right. If it stays white, it is not hot enough.
Too often Americans take a good idea and get carried away with it, as in taking it too literally...Like Pasta Al Dente. No Italian would eat the American version of pasta cooked al dente,,,to them it is undercooked. To me it is raw flour. We make fresh pasta and cook it to order. It is never dried. Occasionally we get somebody asking, or complaining, for their pasta to be al dente. Fresh pasta cannot be al dente because it has never been dried. It is done when the flour is cooked, like all pasta, even the dried kind. Why so many Americans have developed a taste for undercooked flour is beyond me. but I digress...
I took my laser thermometer to Grimaldi's coal fired pizzaria in Tucson, AZ. Floor temp, 550 to 600 F. Nice oven. Great pizza. New York style, not Neapolitan but I am also doing 18" pizzas with lots of toppings, and these are the temps that work. We can, and do 12" Margheritas and with our new Booster flame we can get the char and Neapolitan effect at the push of a button. To me this isn't a hobby, or a religion, it's business, it's culinary science.
So, Deck oven vs. gas fired brick oven? Really? Start with aesthetics. Deck ovens are butt ugly.
From a culinary point of view a deck oven cooks with hot air, hence the closed door. Wood fired and gas fired brick ovens cook with radiant heat,,,,charring?
