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Just Converted MAM505 wood oven to gas

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Fourlix

New member
I have a MAM505 oven from Modena, Italy. After 1.5 years of chopping wood, soot, dirty pizzas, inconsistent temperatures and inconsistent pizzas I have just installed an Avanzini Bruciatorre “El Drago” gas conversion kit from Italy. It fit like a glove in the 5" hole that was already in the oven floor at the center back of the MAM505. I installed it myself in three mornings before we opened. My plumber was on call but it was so easy I didn’t need him. This is a new lease on life for this oven. I wasn’t really liking this oven any more, but now I love it. Pizzas are consistent, clean, and come out faster, most in about 3 minutes or less. The oven was built into a wall and tiled, so changing ovens was really not feasable or affordable for me. The kit runs about $2,500 with shipping. Forno Bravo uses this burner for its “Modena” gas/wood oven, but they won’t sell you one unless you already have a Forno Bravo oven. The kit comes from Italy with all the european listings for gas/electric etc. “Check with your local…”
The flame this thing creates, “El Drago” is 5 feet long, and 3 feet wide and covers the ceiling of the oven. The flame licks its way right up to the front door of the oven. There are some good “you tube” videos, but it looks way cooler in real life. The heat radiates down from the ceiling instead of the lateral heat from the old wood fire. You still have to turn the pizzas but…this thing looks so much better than other gas fired brick ovens I have seen, and I think it must work better too.
 
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What are you getting to for floor and dome temps? I have been thinking about adding a burner for preheat and supplemental heat.
 
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Using an IR laser point thermometer we are getting dome temperatures of 800 to 850 F. Floor temps are up to 650 F down the middle front to back, with a drop of about 100 degrees to the far left and right. The temperature probe is in the coolest part of the oven, on the far right about 4 inches above the floor, and controls are in Celsius. I think we will be putting a little oak in with the gas burner, just for flavor and ambiance. The oak burns a long time and won’t require much attention. We can get this much hotter if we want to, but this is the temperature that works best for us. Even an 18" pizza (15oz. dough ball) with 5 toppings only takes 4 minutes. The primary burner is controlled by a valve, set it and forget it. We had to turn it down to get it to the maintenance temperature we wanted. The controller lights it, but is mainly about the secondary or Booster burner, used to bring the oven up to temp, recover from a lot of pizzas or just give it a little extra char.
 
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Hey Fourlix. That is such a great idea!! Honestly for a commercial kitchen its very difficult to produce consistently cooked pizza every time with wood. Although wood gives you that charred aroma, the risk of getting uneven cooking results is very high. Now I am very tempted to change mine to a gas burner. May I ask, SInce you have installed the drago, have you had any issues with the electrical component? cause it seems to me that the burner is not manually controlled, so if the electrical board fails, who can I find to fix it?
 
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