I certainly would agree with pizza napoletana. A domed Neapolitan oven is the best, and it is logical if you keep in mind what you are baking, then look at the size and shape of the two types of oven. The wood oven is smaller, round, with a domed ceiling. The wood oven burns more efficient and hotter. The larger coal oven is square or rectangle, with a flat ceiling and is better suited to baking bread, and large batches of it. The coal oven, while capable of achieving high temperatures, is harder to control. typically, the oven is either too hot during slow periods, or too cold during busy periods.... it very difficult to get a 10x10 square mass of brick using coal to maintain a constant temperature. But this lower baking temperature is actually what is causing people like ed levine and millions of others to say coal ovens are better, it is because they like crispy (bordering on dry) pizza. With the lower oven temp, between 750 and 850, the pizzas take between 3-5 mintues, giving the pizza time to dry up, or become crispy.. like biscotti. The difference is that a wood oven can be regulated to get the same result as a coal oven if that is ones preference, or you have the option to go up to 950-1200 degrees and bake true neapolitan pizza in 30-60 seconds.. The coal oven also burns anthracite which is cleaner than bituminous, but when I questioned evelyne slomon 10 years ago on which type of oven to get, she said get wood if you want to live past 50.... There probably are some health concerns related to prolonged exposure to coal ovens. The other thing about the myth of these coal ovens is that the owners of these establishments do everything they can to encourage this type of misinformation that has spread over the years... At a tour of john's pizza in the village sponsored by PMQ, the owner stated that the only way to make pizza of that quality/type is with a coal oven and you can't get one becuase no new ones are allowed to be built, you have to find an existing one... how convenient for john! But that is a lie to.. there is company called triple v construction who has been building them for years. The owner of Lombardi's makes similar statements. The truth about these people is that they have a recipe, and a tradition, but they don't know any more about pizza than anyone on this forum. In fact they know less in my opinion because they have closed their minds and have very little understanding of what they are doing. Even ed levine is guilty of this, he knows what he likes, and that is the end of it... he is unwilling to listen to anything else. at the Lombardi's PMQ tour, ed levine was agreeing with john brescio of lombardi's and encouraging that coal oven crap! When corrected by our very own 'pizzanapoletana', ed levine would not listen to a word being said, he would only repete what he believed to be true. unfortunately he is dead wrong... one thing that adds fuel to the fire is that most pizzerias or restaurants that have woodburing ovens in them are basically baking bad pizza and the oven is more of a marketing scheme. They basicallly bake at too low of temperature so that there is no advantage of using a brick oven, and use cheap ingredients... Most pizzerias/restaurants that bake in a brick oven, try to make fancy pizza using regular pizza ingredients in a woodburning oven at regular oven temperatures, yielding a pizza not as good as regular pizza. That is where the coal oven joints succeed.. they are in new york, have access to good ingredients, and have some clue of what they are doing.... With so many average or below average wood fired oven establishments in america, it is easy to understand why a handful of above average coal ovens would be recognized as the best. As my friend john volpi would say, "they are selling water in the desert."
