How your oven works.

A wood burning brick oven from Chicago Brick Oven is specially designed to create the high temperature and heat vacuum that lets you cook food to its flavorful best. Our design and materials let you take full advantage of all cooking methods used by professional chefs — radiant heat, convection and conduction.

 

FlameRoll™

Only our proprietary low-dome construction creates the perfect FlameRoll™ from the rear of the oven to the front. With our low-dome design, the vent pulls the flame horizontally across the top of the dome and then vertically back down the side, creating our unique FlameRoll.™ This effect creates higher temperatures for superior cooking and the rolling flames being drawn across the dome are aesthetically beautiful, giving you a full outdoor wood-fired cooking experience. In competitive high-dome brick ovens or outdoor pizza ovens without an in-chamber fire, the flames get trapped in the upper portion of the dome or are too far away from the food for to create the heat needed for true wood-fired cooking.

 

Radiant Heat

Radiant heat comes from a direct source. In a wood-fired oven, radiant heat can come from two direct sources — the fire and the heat that’s stored in the oven walls and hearth. Radiant heat is very even and will cook food from all directions. The special shape of your CBO oven reduces all cold spots and ensures that the stored radiant heat is used efficiently. By slowly building the oven’s stored heat, you’ll be able to take advantage of the radiant heat for longer periods of time. Use this method of cooking if you want high heat and a short cooking time, especially for pizzas.

 

Convection

Convection is heated air circulating in an oven. Cool air is drawn into the oven through the access hole (when the exterior door is closed) or the oven opening (when the door is open). As the cool air is drawn into the oven, it’s rapidly heated by the fire and the stored heat in the oven. This heated air passes over the food evenly. As the air continues to heat, it passes to the back of the oven and rises. The heated air now again passes over the food on the way out of the oven flue. This draw causes a steady flow of heat to pass over the food, causing convection.

You can also take advantage of convection with closed-door cooking. For example, when you add cool dough to the hot oven, convection will take place through the moisture in the dough. As the hot air comes in contact with the dough, the heat is transferred. The air comes off the dough cooler, and then is heated again by the oven.

 

Conduction

The third method of cooking in your wood-fired brick oven is through conduction. Conduction occurs when a cooler object comes in contact with a warmer object and heat is transferred. The amount of conduction that takes place depends on two things — the temperature difference of the two items and the material (if any) that’s between them. For example, you may want to sear a steak by placing a cast iron grill in a very hot oven. Make sure any cooking device you put into your oven is at 75°F or above to avoid thermal shock to the hearth. Once the grill is at temperature, you’ll place room-temperature steaks on the grill. This contact will cause conduction to take place and sear the steaks. Another example of conduction is putting a pizza directly on the oven’s heated hearth. The heat transferred from the hearth to the pizza will cause an excellent crust to form.