Reply To: Portable Matza Oven

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yitzyk
Participant

I don’t know the actual amount, but I just called the shul’s office, and they gave me the following information:

The place we bought it from last year is now advertising publicly. It is called “Tanurei Yerushalayim”. They are available in two sizes. It comes with both orifice valves to work with Propane or Natural gas. If you order it enough in advance, they ship it by boat from Israel. Otherwise, it has to get sent by air.

My shul bought the larger one last year, and had it shipped by air. The shipping was about $800, but I have no idea how much the oven was. Maybe it was 2 or 3 thousand. It is not really complicated, and might even have been much cheaper than that.

It is a well made serious oven, not a toy. I helped them transport it, assemble it, set it up, and used it with them last year. We had it on almost the lowest temperature it could go, and it was way hotter than a pizza oven. The oven floor has stone plates, and the oven body has a domed roof to concentrate the heat, just like a brick oven. It is an excellent choice for any Matzah bakery, and the small one (though I have never seen it) might be good for a portable set up too.

One warning though – the heat underneath and around the oven gets dangerously high. Don’t go putting one of these in your basement, on your wooden deck, or anywhere NEAR anything meltable or flammable. That does not mean you cannot use it indoors. We used it inside a storefront. You should be fine as long as you put it near a door or window, have fans and plenty of ventilation, and most important, the floor under it must be concrete, metal, stone, or something equally heat proof. We ended up laying down cement boards (aka. wonderboard) under it (after the vinyl tiles melted!)

Also (just as a curiosity) it consumes propane faster than a normal BBQ grill. The small 20lb cylinders are not designed to release the gas so quickly, and they froze up. So we had a few and alternated them. It was just interesting. We also kept the tank in a tub of water, but I am not sure what exactly that accomplished. It probably helped insulate or defrost them?