2stone oven in commercial setting?

[negotiator50]

Anyone deploy a 2stone oven in a commercial setting? Would it be feasible to daisy chain 4 or 5 of these next to each other or on top of each other at a restaurant? I am looking into a wood fired oven (earthstone) but the space requirements are making those types of ovens prohibitive. At my pizza parlor, I couldnt imagine cooking more than 3 to 4 of these types of pizzas at a time with a 5 minute cook time. Feasible?

Another question I have about this oven is its ability to maintain its temperature after cooking a pizza. Can someone measure the temperature before and after cooking a pizza in one of these ovens (preferably start at around 800 degrees)?

Thanks

[2stone]

Negotiator50.

I have a number of people looking into doing what you are proposing.
The 2stone oven can easily handle what you are talking about.
It is set up so that with an extra part the casing can be stuffed with rock wool
insulation, and the top stones can be doubled up for increased thermal mass,

It can also be set up on a custom base for the desired hight.

I have tested it in a production type run and was able to do several 3 min pies with about
1 1/2 min between and had no significant heat drop.

willard

[scottfsmith]

I think the opposite is the problem, if you don't get the next pizza in quickly the stone gets too hot and you burn the bottom.  As long as the pizza makers know to put the heat waaay down if there is no pizza "on deck" to go in then you should be fine.  The 1 1/2 min figure of Willards is also what I have observed for pizzas one after the other.  It takes a similar time to warm up the air temp on my grill setup if I have it in the waay low heat setting because I didn't have a pizza to put in yet.  I would also say the use of IR guns is a must to make sure the stone is not too hot or too cold, its too hard to be timing how long since last pizza came out when you are rushing around throwing on toppings etc. etc.

Scott

[negotiator50]

Scottfsmith,

That makes a lot of sense. I think one could perfect the use of the oven with some simple testing. For example, setup a timer for each oven whereby an oven that is preheated but the propane or gas is turned down to low can be instantly heated (1 to 2 minutes), a pizza is thrown in there for 3 to 4 minutes, pizza is removed, and oven gas is reduced to minimum and allowed to cool for 2 to 3 minutes before process is restarted. In this manner, one pizza can be cooked every ten minutes but each pizza will be served within 5 minutes. Add in the fact that there will be 4 or 5 of these ovens and it is feasible to pump out up to 5 pizzas every 10 minutes and around 100 pizzas an hour.

Of course, this would require much precision in the way the ovens are operated. However, I see no reason why I could not automate this process by computer interaction with the gas lines and display readouts at each oven.

Just a thought.

[scottfsmith]

If you are running one pizza after another you don't need to cool the stone down, because having the pizza on it keeps it from getting any hotter.  So all you do is wait a minute or two and pop in the next one.  I am only suggesting the need to cool down if you may not immediately have a pizza ready to go -- if the oven sits on high for 10 minutes after taking a pizza out, you will have a too-hot stone. But if there was no pizza immediately ready then your approach would work.  So: pizza ready?  Set buzzer for 1.5 minutes when you pop out a pie; put next pie in at buzzer.  No pizza?  Turn to "low" setting calibrated to keep stone temp constant.  Then when ready to cook, turn to high again, set timer for 2 minutes.  When timer goes off, insert pizza.  I think this could work if you set buzzers to make sure times were not missed.  So, upon second thought you may be able to get away without an IR gun, if the setup was calibrated properly and the timer discipline maintained.  I think it would be even easier if you included a thermoprobe for air temp inside and an IR reader for the stone temp, though.

Scott