5.2) Pizza ovens
Pizza is a very heterogeneous system, whose ideal cooking conditions depend both on food related factors (such as composition, physical properties, size, and shape), and on oven related factors (i.e. oven type, temperature curve, and both radiation and convective heat transfers). The oven operational conditions during cooking will directly affect the product quality and cost. Although the pizza cooking technology has not often been researched, a few phenomena may be analyzed by creating an analogy with bread coction, since the basic ingredients of both products are nearly the same. The study being developed at LABTUCAL is focused on the quantification of the most adequate radiative/convective parcels for pizza cooking, as well as to check the best cooking temperature curves. In order to perform this research, a pizza oven prototype was designed and built in which it is possible to control a wide range of operational parameters.
