Millar Stainless Steel Pizza Oven

[Chicago Bob]

@PN.Pizza ... the Millars oven absolutely holds heat.  I've probably given mixed messages on this.  The oven maintains heat very well, just not as well as the typical masonry oven, from what I gather.  Again, I have not precisely measured and timed the oven's heat retention properties yet, but I will.  Seems like I owe it to this community to do so.  One of the problems so far is that ALL of my experience with the oven has been in really cold weather.  My sense is that this has to affect, at least a little bit, the heat retention properties of the oven.  Like I said, I need to do some more precise measuring and will.  But the oven easily retains enough heat to make bread ... I have had pretty good luck the few times I've taken advantage of the lower temps on the back end of making pizza, to make bread.

I don't know man....something just isn't sounding right here.....

[BoTrojan]

Hey, Chicago Bob ... I'm just simply saying that it holds heat pretty well as far as I'm concerned, but I think it's going to hold it even better when it's not 15 degrees outside.  The fact is that I've had the oven since November, have used it about a dozen times and am still learning about its performance and properties.  As I've said over and over again, I haven't yet done precise performance measuring ... and ... to be honest, I don't really have a frame of reference for comparison.  It's the only wood-fired oven I've ever extensively worked with.  What is good performance on heat retention for me is, I'm guessing, maybe not that good for you. 

Make sense?   

[Chicago Bob]

OK Bo..calm down man, it's all good. I'm just trying to get a handle on your vernacular dude. One post you say...

@PN.Pizza ... the Millars oven absolutely holds heat. 

Then we see you back peddling with...

  The fact is that I've had the oven since November, have used it about a dozen times and am still learning about its performance and properties.  . 

Make sense?   

As was said earlier, we here tend to analyze something new very closely. That is what you asked for, right?
Not trying to split hairs my friend....just keeping the record straight. I'm sensing an adversarial position on your part where it is not needed Bo.
Make a great(current) pie in that bad boy and let's post it up pizza pal! 
I believe it's possible....

[dellavecchia]

Bo - Your assumptions are absolutely correct. Your oven will hold heat better in warmer weather. My oven is masonry but it is relatively thin compared to most others out there, and mine will not hold heat as long in winter as it does on hot days in the summer.

When you get a day to bake I am very interested to see if you can get that 60-90 second pie. You will probably need to keep the pie pretty close to the coals, and then for the last 20 seconds or so lift the pie into the dome of the oven to get the top heat.

In another thread I saw a NP come out of an Allan Scott oven which I previously thought not really possible. So yours may also be able to as well. The fact that it is just an experiment for us is nice of you to do. I understand that might not be the type of pizza you, personally, are after.

John

[BoTrojan]

All good points.  Yes, I feel it's my obligation to properly test the oven's capabilities.  I promise to do so in the future and will document the results for the community here.

Cheers!!!

[BoTrojan]

PS:  Here's what I'm dealing with!!!!!

[TXCraig1]

Sunny and 70 here. 

[PN.pizza]

PS:  Here's what I'm dealing with!!!!!

Thats awesome! I live near Boston and was wondering how well a stainless steel oven would fare in the winter months.  I expect to be baking in the snow as well.  Regarding heat retention, I've read people complaining about loss of heat when they were cooking and the temp dropped below 70 degrees.   I'm hoping to have a Fontana Mangiafucco by the end of the month and will be out no matter how cold.

[BoTrojan]

OK, I made this pizza tonight.  It was a balmy 30 degrees outside.  I made a pretty small fire, because I was only making 3 pizzas, just enough for dinner for me and my family.  The oven floor temp was about 860 when I made this pizza.  This dough was a room temp, long fermentation dough that had actually sat in the freezer for several weeks.  I let it thaw for about 12 hours. 

This pizza took exactly 1 minute, 42 seconds to make.  I did NO doming on this particular pizza because the cheese (I didn't have any fresh mozzarella tonight, so it's just part skim shredded mozzarella, unfortunately), was already plenty done.  Two hours later, the oven floor is still right around 500 degrees and I have NOT had the oven lid/door on and I never added any wood to the fire. 

[dellavecchia]

Very nice. I looks like this oven has enough top heat to bake a sub 2 minute pie.

John

[Chicago Bob]

Is that snow on the edge of your table Bo? 
Nice look'in pie man...

[scott123]

Very nice. I looks like this oven has enough top heat to bake a sub 2 minute pie.

John, my issue with this oven has, from the beginning, been about heat balance, not whether or not the top of the pizza can be baked in less than 2 minutes. Between the tall dome and lack of thermal mass in it, the balance skews way too heavily towards the bottom.

[BoTrojan]

Is that snow on the edge of your table Bo? 
Nice look'in pie man...

Nahh ... luckily that's just the table cloth!!!!

[BoTrojan]

John, my issue with this oven has, from the beginning, been about heat balance, not whether or not the top of the pizza can be baked in less than 2 minutes. Between the tall dome and lack of thermal mass in it, the balance skews way too heavily towards the bottom.

Scott, dude, you're moving the goal posts on me!!    We've already established that a hard core VPN artisan will not be happy with this oven.  I, on the other hand, think it's a slick oven that makes great pizza and is a lot of fun to use.  I think it performs pretty well ... easily well enough for me.  I've made literally thousands of pizzas over the years using all manner of approaches and devices, including some actual hands on experience with a couple of brick ovens in Italy (I've described the context for this before).  The Millars oven is easily worth the $$ I spent on it, compared to using conventional ovens or grills.  Honestly, I also believe I will grow out of it eventually and will want to build an authentic oven.  In the meantime, this is a reasonable alternative in my view.  But honest people can disagree on things ... and it looks like you and I will have to agree to disagree.     

[TXCraig1]

That's a nice looking pie from what LITTLE I can see 

You might give this a try next time: http://www.drpic.com/ and make the picture a little bigger. It will let you crop and re-size. I'd make the pictures at least 600px wide - they can be as much as 800px wide for uploading to pizzamaking.

I'd love to see pictures of the underside and crumb as well.

Craig

[BoTrojan]

That's a nice looking pie from what LITTLE I can see 

I sent you the full-sized picture via e-mail

[BoTrojan]

All

Here's a Pizza Margherita that I made on Saturday with the Millar's oven.  It was about Pizza #6 that evening.  Floor temp was 850.  Cook time was about one minute, 45 seconds.  It's a 12-inch pizza.  I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the bottom.  I'll try and remember to do that next time. 

I used crushed San Marzano tomatoes (spiced only with salt and basil) and some good quality, fresh cow's milk mozzarella.  The dough was my own cheater recipe for VPN pizza ... I used sifted bread flour, salt and low temp and IDY, fermented over about 10 hours in all.  When I made the dough balls, they each weighed about 13 ounces before slowly resting and raising for about 7 hours after the initial 3-hour fermentation.

Bottom line:  this was an excellent pizza ... I'm not sure where to get better, more authentic Pizza Margherita around here anyway.

Question to the group:  given the description above, what could I change that would give me better leoparding?  That's about the only thing missing, I think, in this pizza.

Botrojan 

[Bill/SFNM]

Question to the group:  given the description above, what could I change that would give me better leoparding?  That's about the only thing missing, I think, in this pizza.

Botrojan

BoTrojan,


I don't recall any other member on this forum expressing something I feel very strongly about after extensive testing: forget about leoparding. It is just a cosmetic artifact of the fermentation time/temp and heat. Depending on which sourdough culture I use and how I ferment it and how I bake it, I can easily produce a pizza with very little leoparding that has much better flavor and texture than one with picture-perfect leoparding.  More often than not, pizzas I bake that have pretty leopard spots are over-baked. I understand that visuals are an important part of food enjoyment, but IMHO, leoparding as a cue for quality is just an illusion. 

[TXCraig1]

Nice looking pie, Bo. I bet it did taste great. How big was it (diameter)? 13-14"? It's hard to tell from the picture. 13oz sounds like a lot of dough for an Neapolitan pie. That's about 34% more dough than I use for a 13" pie.

As for more leoparding, I'd suggest longer fermentation keeping everything else the same. This is just pure speculation from looking at the picture, but it appears that your dough is under under-fermented. The cornice closest to you looks a good bit smaller than the far side of the pie. Given the amount of dough you used, I would have expected a massive cornice all the way around.

[BoTrojan]

Great feedback, both of you.  Much appreciated.

I made another pizza later in the evening with a dough that had fermented longer (it was left over, had been frozen and brought back to life over a couple of days) and the leoparding was better ... though it didn't taste any better.  Craig, I will try your suggestions.  By the way, the pizza was about 12-inch diameter and to be more precise, the dough balls were generally 12.7 to 12.8 ounces.  I keep forgetting that imprecise measures aren't best to use on this board 

Can either of you give me a link to a recipe on this forum for making great VPN dough with bread flour or something other than 00 flour ... that is, something cheaper and more readily accessible?

Bo