Question 3: Can the oven
operate on gas only and is the oven configurable with an under floor assist
burner?
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Wood Stone offers ovens in
wood, wood-gas
combination,
and gas only configurations.
In addition, most Wood
Stone ovens can be equipped with a thermostatically controlled
infra-red (under floor) burner option – which makes them the highest production ovens available
in the world.
Why is having the option for an under floor
assist burner important? Cooking in a Stone-Hearth oven requires a
fine balance of top and bottom heat. With thinner or multi-piece
ovens, or with gas fired ovens that
have only a radiant dome flame this balance can be difficult to
maintain during heavy production cycles. As pizzas (or other
products) are placed on the floor they
shadow the cooking surface from the only heat sources in the
oven -- the heat coming off of the dome and the radiant flame.
To illustrate this point let's consider an
example we've all experienced: hot pavement on a very sunny day.
The radiant flame is like the sun. The heat it puts off is
soaked up by the floor much like pavement heats up from the
sunshine.
If something blocks the sun, "shadowing" the
pavement if you will, then that shaded pavement is cooler then the
exposed surface. In the image to the right you see a
parked car blocking the heat as it soaks in to the pavement.
The yellow area is cooler than the rest of the pavement.
Pizzas in an oven can block the cooking
surface in much the same way. Heat radiates off the open
radiant flame and dome and saturates the cooking surface. When
you place a pizza on the floor it does two things...first it takes
some heat from the floor (it's relatively much colder than the
floor) and second it blocks the radiant heat from transmitting back
into the floor.
How much this impacts the cooking performance
of the oven depends on a few factors. One is obviously how
thick the floor is. If no heat is being radiated back into the
stone then the thickness ("heat sink") of the floor become critical.
The thicker the material in the cooking surface the better. A second point is how much
of the floor is being shadowed. If you're not very busy then much of
the floor is exposed and can soak up heat from the flame.
Finally, if the floor is a single-piece you will see much better
lateral transmission of heat, meaning those surfaces exposed to
radiant flame can soak up the heat and transmit laterally to
underneath the pizza shadowing the floor (also see Points of
Difference about
Oven Floor Thickness).
An Infra Red (IR) Assist
Burner Can Guarantee Floor Temperature
 For
chefs with heavy production needs and who require consistent high
performance, Wood Stone offers ovens with an Underfloor Infra-Red
Burner (an IR burner as we call it around the shop).
The IR burner is thermostatically controlled.
If you have a temperature range you want to maintain, say 550-580
degrees Fahrenheit, then you program the set point of the burner at
550 (the bottom of the cooking range).
 As
long as you are above the set point you will be operating the oven
with the radiant flame only. But if you have high production
and continually shadow the floor as described above (it is possible
for even our ovens to lose some floor temperature over extended
periods of time) and drop below the set point the IR burner will
come on automatically providing heat from below, completely
unobstructed by any cooking going on at the surface.
With the optional IR burner in our Wood Stone oven you can keep
cooking during your busiest of times without a drop off in oven
performance or production.
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