17. Baking Pizza by Infrared Radiation and Conduction Heat Transfers and Mass Transfer in Unsteady State

In this chapter, we will investigate baking of a pizza by infrared radiation heat transfer from hot ceiling bricks of a hemispherical dome of a wood fired oven and by conduction heat transfer from hot bricks covering the floor which are contacting the bottom surface of a pizza crust. During the baking process, pizza will also lose heat by mass transfer, namely by evaporation, from pizza’s top surface to oven’s air. All heat transfer mechanisms acting on the pizza are in unsteady state from the moment the pizza is placed on the floor of the oven. Objects of baking a good pizza is not to burn the bottom of the crust and have a crispy bottom and also cook the dough and toppings to an exact water content at the end of baking process. We will assume the pizza to be a large disk, i.e. a diameter of D = 0.25 m, with a small thickness, i.e. 0.01 m, and use the one dimensional unsteady state heat transfer equation presented in Equation 17-1.