spamtrap1888 > wrote:
> On Apr 5, 9:17 am, Brooklyn1 <Gravesend1> wrote:
>> On Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:08:53 -0400, Gary > wrote:
>>> Jim Elbrecht wrote:
>>
>>>> Yes the stone is in the oven so it preheats. My oven's top setting
>>>> is 550. When the oven is 550, the surface of the stone is 600+.
>>>> [the commercial oven is over 700F]
>>
>>>> When the pizza is slid onto it immediately sears and crusts the
>>>> bottom-- and transfers more heat quicker than air would.
>>
>>> I'll have to try a stone. I can see how a preheated stone will hold it's
>>> heat when you open the oven door to put the pizza in. Most of the hot air
>>> will escape in that move but the stone will still be hot.
>>
>> The temperature of the stone will drop dramatically as soon as raw
> ^^^^
> SURFACE
>
>> dough with wet toppings is laid on it... and as you admit most of the
>> hot air will escape when the oven is opened, therefore the recovery
>> rate for the stone will be nil.
>
> So nothing can ever be baked, because the hot air escapes the oven
> when you open the door to put the food in?
>
>> Real brick ovens are heated directly,
>> residential ovens are heated secondarilly by air that first needs to
>> be heated. Pizza will be fully baked and out of the oven before the
>> temperature of the stone recovers.
>
> Brokelyn is a little bit right even though he is mostly wrong:
>
> 1. The stone is a heat storage device -- slow to heat and slow to
> release heat. If heat is analogous to electrical charge, the stone is
> a capacitor.
> 2. Thus even after you open the oven door, the stone retains heat --
> unlike a metal pan. (It would be interesting to try to make pan pizza
> with a preheated cast iron pan, though.)
> 2. Only some of the heat that the stone retains is transferred
> immediately to the pizza; the remainder is transferred more and more
> slowly.
> 3. The stone is heated through all three means: radiation, conduction,
> and convection. Radiative heat transfer from the burner-heated oven
> bottom occurs constantly, which tends to maintain the amount of heat
> in the stone. Once the door is shut, the conduction and convection
> mechanisms come back into play.
>
> So, where was he right? First, the stone has to be fully heated for it
> to be effective Let it soak a couple hours in the hot oven. Second, no
> home oven I've seen can approach the heat of a commercial oven. That's
> why I precook any raw toppings, so that all the heat goes to baking
> the dough and melting/browning the cheese.

Just like a refrigerator, oven air has little mass. Most of the stored heat
is in the walls and racks. Same in a house. The furniture, walls, etc store
most of the energy.

Greg