February 10, 2009 - 8:48pm
Adding thermal mass to an oven
I tried these and they worked. They are ceramic briquettes intended for gas barbeque grills. They are ceramic, heat resistant, intended for cooking, and made in the USA. The 45 pack adds about 4.5 pounds. In a pan, they might be able to be used for steaming.
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What brand are these briquettes? Are they available at Lowes, Home Depot, Wal Mart, etc. I live in rural Iowa, an am going to have to drive 20 miles if at Wal Mart, 75 or more, otherwise.
They are Grill Greats Ceramic Briquettes by Du-Co Ceramics. I checked the web sites for Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart and none of them had this brand listed. I had to buy them online from a barbeque shop.
The good news is it won't be long until the displays of grills and tillers replace the snow blower displays.
Good luck.
@jeb--
I live in Waterloo IA, and I've found products almost identical to these at both Lowes and Menards, as well as a local hardware store. I have a set of square white ones, with holes like those in the pic, that I use in my grill. Never thought to add them to my oven, though.
I don't follow the reason for putting them in a kitchen oven which contains a baking stone (thermal mass).
Or are you speaking of wood fired ovens?
Any oven can benefit from additional thermal mass. When this stuff heats up to your desired temp, it adds "oomph!" to your rediated heat, and stabilizes the heating/cooling cycles of your oven.
I often bake in a Big Green Egg [www.biggrenegg.com], which is entirely ceramic, and even they beef up the thermal mass capacity whenever possible.
A pizza stone gives you X thermal mass. Try to boost your thermal mass to 10x... you'll be glad you did!
~ B
So I replaced my long-suffering pizza stone with a 3/4" granite slab a couple of months ago, which definitely seemed to be an improvement...
It cracked this week, & needing to replace it, I was looking at the usual chamotte slab, but before doing so, decided to do a little reading, to check my understanding of thermal mass
I came across this http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/bakingStone.html