No, not lately. Of all of the temperatures in the chamber, the air temp has the least impact over the 60 seconds or so it takes the pie to bake. Relatively little of the crust is in direct contact with the air. By far, most of the energy absorbed by the pie will come from the deck and is responsible for how the crust comes out. In the case of my oven, radiant heat from the flames and coals and dome is what takes care of top and edges.
Not sure how this will play out in a 2stone, but I would guess the whole charring/leoparding thing is going to be problematic. I would avoid using these visual cues and focus on the taste and texture of the crust first and foremost.
Bill, I have been puzzling over your remarks above. I think it may be better to talk more precisely, in terms of the three kinds of heat transfer that are possible: radiation, convection, and conduction (no, I'm not someone with perfect memory of high school physics - I just looked it up in Wikipedia). Radiation is directional heat radiation, convection is heating by flowing hot air, and conduction is by surface contact. The bottom of the pizza cooks by radiation and conduction I guess, and the top cooks by radiation and convection - ?? A probe "in the air" is like the top of the pizza in that it will measure both radiant and convective heat (both the air flowing by the probe and the radiation striking it will heat up the probe). So I think an air probe will in fact be an important reading in both the 2stone and in a woodfired oven.
In comparing the 2stone and a wood-fired pizza oven, both will heat the pizza bottom by the same kind of heat; the pizza top will also be heated by convection and radiation in both cases, but I expect it will have more radiant heat in the wood-burning oven whereas the 2stone will have more convection heat due to the airflow of the hot air. The 2stone has a stone on the top which will also be radiating heat down on to the pizza, so this is very much like the top of the wood pizza oven. My wild guess is this top-down radiation component will be roughly similar on both (note the wood oven ceiling was heated more by radiation and the 2stone ceiling more by convection, but once they are heated they are both radiators of heat, the original source of the heat has no relevance); I am going to use my IR gun to measure the heat on that top stone next time and perhaps that can be compared to brick oven ceiling temps. What is missing in the 2stone is the radiant heat from the fire, but it compensates by more convection heat I expect, due to airflow from flames up. Convection in a woodburning oven is from air flowing in the front and out the top, so the pizza will be more "upstream" from the heat source compared to the 2stone, so I think there will be less convection heating in a woodburning oven. But, I don't know what the air currents there are precisely, maybe the air flow spirals all around the oven or something.
Since these heating profiles are somewhat different in the two, it could well be manifest in some difference of how a "best tasting" crust looks in the two methods.
Does that make sense?
Scott
