Unfortunately there is no best oven size. The size oven you build should relate to what you are going to use the oven for. The two primary uses of wood-fired ovens are bread baking and pizza baking.
If your oven is used just for bread baking, then you can build it fairly small. For pizza making, you'll have to make it bigger even if you're making only one pizza at a time.
A pizza needs to be moved around in the oven so that it will bake evenly and it takes space to do this.
I recently made some pizzas in a 16.5" X 30"and I had a hard time. The length was fine, but the width was not. There was simply no way to maneuver the pizza around.
At home in my 32" diameter, round earth oven, I build a fire one side of the oven and bake on the other side. When the floor cools off, with my metal peel, I simple move the fire and coals to other side of the oven and bake where the fire used to be. Depending on how many pizzas I want to bake, I might move the fire back and forth several times.
With this technique, I can maintain a 700ºF floor temperature, and this is an ideal temperature for making pizzas.
If it's just breads you're baking, and assuming you aren't making more than four breads at a time, you can get by with a smaller oven because once you place the breads in the oven to bake, you shouldn't need to shuffle them around.
If you're going to be baking breads and pizzas (of course, never at the same time) then build a larger oven.
If your oven is used just for bread baking, then you can build it fairly small. For pizza making, you'll have to make it bigger even if you're making only one pizza at a time.
A pizza needs to be moved around in the oven so that it will bake evenly and it takes space to do this.
I recently made some pizzas in a 16.5" X 30"and I had a hard time. The length was fine, but the width was not. There was simply no way to maneuver the pizza around.
At home in my 32" diameter, round earth oven, I build a fire one side of the oven and bake on the other side. When the floor cools off, with my metal peel, I simple move the fire and coals to other side of the oven and bake where the fire used to be. Depending on how many pizzas I want to bake, I might move the fire back and forth several times.
With this technique, I can maintain a 700ºF floor temperature, and this is an ideal temperature for making pizzas.
If it's just breads you're baking, and assuming you aren't making more than four breads at a time, you can get by with a smaller oven because once you place the breads in the oven to bake, you shouldn't need to shuffle them around.
If you're going to be baking breads and pizzas (of course, never at the same time) then build a larger oven.
16.5" floor diameter. Much too narrow for pizza baking
28" floor diameter. Plenty of room for pizza baking
