Hi johny, not that I have any actual experience to offer you, but it seems that the fire out method would most likely give you better results. The fact that if the fire is built in the center of the cooking area and then burned to ash your entire cooking surface would be heated evenly, and should bake your goods evenly without the hot side/cold side effect from the fire pulling in air while it burns problem.  Again just going from what Ive seen and read in different books.

Good luck, its a darn nice looking oven.

Johny,

I have been reading about cooking in a clay oven and I think I understand that the fire should be out when you cook. My take is that you warm up the inside layer then sweep out the ashes and close the door to let it stabilize somewhat. Then when the temp is where you want to cook at around 500 or maybe a little more, put your bread/pizza in and close the door up again. It should only take a few minutes for a pizza and that would be the first thing to cook. Later in the day the temp would have fallen to 500 or so and breads could be baked. Later still, meats can be roasted and so on.

I'm planning on building a clay oven in the back yard as soon as the frost is out of the ground here (Wisconsin). Good luck and post some pictures of your progress.

Eric

  your oven looks interesting , Johny  and you will get the hang of it soon from the sounds of it.

I saw an insert that goes into kitchen oven and was wondering if anyone has heard for it.

good luck johny, keep me posted.

Looks interesting..where in Connecticut are you? I'm originally from Simsbury and have been here in Oregon for 4 years now. Let us know how it goes...