Can I adjust the height of the oven ceiling? I want to decrease the cooking surface-to-oven ceiling height

While there are a couple of wood-fired oven “experts” on the internet stating the ceilings in the Barile series ovens are “too tall” for cooking, we (and thousands of extremely satisfied BrickWood customers) couldn’t disagree more. Our Barile Series models are not only excellent for taller foods (you can easily cook 3 or 4 turkeys in the Mattone Barile Grande oven), but it gives you room to BBQ over wood char for an unbeatable taste that gas nor charcoal can deliver. Not to mention - you can smoke a ton of food in a Mattone Barile oven!

But if you still want a lower ceiling with your Mattone Barile oven, here are 3 simple ways to adjust the hearth-to-ceiling height on your oven.

1. You can adjust the height of your oven by simply adding / removing firebrick on top of the cooking hearth (firebrick cooking surface). If you want to quickly decrease the height of your oven by 2.5", simply add another layer of firebrick ON TOP of the existing firebrick cooking surface. DO NOT mortar this layer in unless you want the surface to be permanent. Also, if you have one of our oven doors, make sure you leave enough room in the opening of the oven to accommodate the 1" flange on the bottom of the door (back side).

2. Simply remove the bottom layer on either side of the foam form on both on form legs. This is as simple as cutting styrofoam with a saw! BUT - We do NOT offer an oven door to accommodate the altered opening size AND this construction method is permanent. Your oven will be 14"H forever and ever… Do we recommend building your oven this way? No!


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  1. Okay, Okay… while this isn’t really an option to lower the ceiling height on our Mattone Barile series ovens, our super-easy to build Cortile Barile ovens and Mattone Cupola ovens are designed with a lower ceiling height without having to alter or customize the foam forms. The Cortile Barile and our 28" and 36" Mattone Cupola ovens have a 14" ceiling while our 40" and 46" Mattone Cupola ovens clock-in at 16" in height.