[Sca-cooks] trivets and dutch ovens

[Stefan li Rous]

  Nancy Kiel replied to me with:
> I was able to cook for 4 years at Colonial Williamsburg without using a
> trivet in the ovens.  Of course, it is nice to have an actual hearth to
> cook on, and maybe that makes the difference between needing and not
> needing a trivet.

Yes, but there is a major difference between the stone ovens you were 
using and a metal dutch oven over and under hot coals. You are talking 
about using a single chamber rock or brick oven, right? Or are you 
talking about using a dutch oven in a hearth? If the latter, you may 
have just been able to control the heat better. If you are talking 
about using a mass oven, the following applies.

With the dutch oven you are continuing to apply heat to the metal, 
which will conduct it quite nicely to anything touching it inside, 
which in our case, meant the bottom of the turnovers. In your case, the 
temperature will be at its hottest when you first put the food in the 
oven and from then on it will continue to go down. The more mass in the 
oven, the slower the temperature will drop. But it isn't going to get 
hotter. The temperature in the mass oven is also likely to be much more 
evenly applied. In the dutch oven you can very likely have some hot 
spots. The air space below the food helps even this out.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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