The Langlioni Micro Oven™

 

 

Approximately 3 billion pizzas are sold in the United States every year, with up to 94% of the population partaking; 93% of those consume pizza at least once a month. There are thousands of establishments supplying these pizzas, forming a 46.9-billion-dollar industry in the US alone. This does not count a legion of private residential pizza hobbyists baking pizza on stones in conventional residential ovens at low temperatures (500°F).

Moreover, there are many dedicated amateurs baking high temperature pizza in the back yard using lightweight refractory floors and domes in uninsulated open metal chambers using propane burners. These ovens are cheap, fire quickly, reach 900°F, but are unstable. They require manual fuel adjustments, manual temperature sensing with a handheld infrared thermometer, manual rotation of the pizza during the bake cycle, and cannot be used indoors because of their propane fuel source and lack of insulation and ventilation.

There are hundreds of oven types used to cook pizzas around the world, but the gold standard of pizza oven performance is the 6,000-pound, 900° F Napoletana refractory mass radiation ovens of Italy. The technology is 11,000 years old and was invented at about the same time as agriculture. They can be insulated and vented and are acceptable for indoor use. They are extremely stable because the refractory heat sinks are so large relative to the mass of the pizza, that the pizza changes the temperature of the system very little. To install one is an architectural process; to install one on anything other than a ground level floor is a civil engineering project.  They retail at around $17,000 plus shipping and installation, no small fee.

What the market currently lacks is an indoor residential option whose black glass touch control panels and sleek stainless steel doors better fit with modern market standards. Of course, we would desire the floor temperature stabilization characteristics of the refractory ovens of Italy, but we would want the oven to come in a box from Home Depot or Lowes, delivered to your house by two guys in a pickup truck for installation in your designer oven cabinet above the low microwave. These characteristics would also be very convenient for light industrial applications, and multiple ovens could be used for larger scale operations.

The Langlioni Micro Oven™ fills a void and comes to the market with no real competition. IT IS A NEW TYPE OF RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL APPLIANCE. The oven will hold at target temperatures between bake cycles and display those temperatures on the face of the oven continuously, unlike any other rotating refractory floor oven in the industry known to us. As a commercial device, it is light and can be developed for catering and food trucks. The oven could be inexpensive, easy to install and easy to move from one kitchen to another. The ovens are production scalable by simply buying another oven when business grows. Multiple ovens can be on or off depending on the demands of the kitchen during the day. The ovens can be off at the end of the day and used intermittently, saving fuel and improving efficiency. Different ovens can be set for different products or chefs. The oven scales nicely with labor at one chef per oven.

 

PRODUCT FEATURES & BENEFITS

Special features

  • Open face design with no door in the way for inspection of the pizza bottom during the baking cycle and moving pizza into and out of the oven chamber
  • Refractory floor and dome for high temperature performance from 150-1000 degrees
  • Rotating floor uses time averaging to compensate for variation in baking chamber area temperatures for even baking on all sides, with no manual “spinning” of the pizza as required when using an open face and fixed floor
  • Independent sensing, regulation, and display of baking chamber temperature, top oven floor temperature, and bottom oven floor temperature, using two burners and three independent control systems for unprecedented control of baking conditions
  • Two forced air natural gas burners for powerful high energy heat sources to rapidly compensate for heat sink losses to pizza during the bake cycle, and rapidly correct any variation from target temperatures in the chamber or on the floor surfaces
  • Quiet powered ventilation to remove smoke and prevent unwanted heat in the kitchen
  • Electronic ignition with flame rectification for ease of use and safety
  • Conventional appliance size: less than 100 pounds, 26 inches deep, 30 inches wide, 42 inches tall; fits in a conventional double oven cabinet with a second oven
  • Convenient baking surface height at 55 inches from the floor so that the bottom of the flat bread can be checked without the chef bending over to see it
  • Lightweight and portable; suitable for food trucks, catering and outdoor applications
  • Bakes 16-inch pizzas
  • Specialized for pizza and all flatbreads but works nicely for almost any baking or broiling of meats, seafood, casseroles, desserts
  • Independent adjustable fuel supplies for when the system is gaining temperature (ramp), and for when the system is losing temperature (soak), for each burner system, for unprecedented temperature control
  • Bakes a gourmet pizza in 60-90 seconds with a 10-minute firing time and a 90 second refresh time or return to target temperatures after a pizza is removed from the oven. This allows a pizza to bake and the oven to refresh in 3 minutes, yielding production rates of 20 pizzas per hour
  • Refractory floor is removable from oven for easy cleaning
  • No management of solid fuels for supply or ash for disposal or carrying fuel tanks
  • Inexpensive to install, conventional residential 5-inch vent stack, ¾ inch, 4-pound natural gas line, 120-vac, comes in a box, and any commercial or residential HVAC technician can install it
  • Easy to do production scaling at 20 pizzas per hour, per chef, just add another chef and oven for 40 pizzas per hour, etc.
  • For professional and amateur artisans alike, this oven offers unprecedented automatic control of baking conditions, allowing 13 settings, six electronic settings for temperature control, four valve settings for burner fuel supply and three settings for floor rotation

 

PRODUCT DETAILS

The Langlioni Micro Oven™ uses an open face oven chamber with a rotating floor, and a conventional thermocouple, electronic control system and burner to control the temperature of the baking chamber, like other ovens in the market. It uses a burner under the floor to heat the floor, like some other ovens in the market, but it is the only oven to use infrared sensors positioned above and under the rotating oven floor to provide signal to two controllers arranged with relays in series to power a solenoid gas valve in the fuel line to the underfloor burner. Maximum temperature and the negative soak deviation temperature can be set for the top and bottom of the floor, so that limit setting can occur on both sides when the oven is empty. The baking surface temperature is controlled in an empty oven and displayed on the face of the oven. This answers the most important question when baking pizza. Is the floor at temperature to receive the dough? The oven takes the floor to target temperature, holds it at target, and displays the temperature at target.

 

When the oven is loaded, the infrared sensor above the oven floor cannot read the floor temperature of the baking surface, because it is covered with pizza. Because the pizza is always cooler than the floor target temperature, the controller relay is always closed and calling for power to open the solenoid fuel valve for the underfloor burner when a pizza is in the oven. Because this “top floor” relay is in series with a relay on a controller receiving signal from infrared light emissions from the bottom of the oven floor, this “bottom floor” controller limits the maximum and minimum bottom surface floor temperatures during the bake cycle, maintaining continuous rotating floor temperature sensing and regulation, even in a loaded oven. Bottom floor temperature control is important to prevent overshoot of top floor temperature during the refresh period between short baking cycles, and to indirectly control baking surface temperatures during longer baking cycles at lower temperatures, when the bottom is the only part of the floor that is available for monitoring. This gives the oven a very wide operating temperature range.

 

The oven has 13 settings:

  1. Chamber maximum temperature
  2. Chamber soak temperature loss limit
  3. Baking surface maximum temperature
  4. Baking surface soak temperature loss limit
  5. Bottom floor surface maximum temperature
  6. Bottom floor soak temperature loss limit
  7. Chamber ramp gas valve setting
  8. Chamber soak gas valve setting
  9. Floor ramp gas valve setting
  10. Floor soak gas valve setting
  11. Floor rotation right
  12. Floor rotation left
  13. Floor rotation still

 

It is lightweight because it uses circulating hot air to heat the chamber, and only 25 pounds of refractory dome and floor heat sink, allowing short 10-minute firing times, but leaving thermal instability because of the high ratio of pizza mass to heat sink mass, and uneven thermal conditions in the small open baking chamber. These problems are solved by using multiple sensors, one thermocouple, two infrared sensors, two powerful forced air natural gas burners and electronic controls for two independent powerful and accurate independent heating systems, one each for the oven floor and the baking chamber. The refractory floor rotates in the baking chamber so that there is equal exposure of the pizza to any temperature variations in the baking chamber for even baking on all sides of the pizza.   This oven is designed to bake Pizza Napoletana in 60-90 seconds, 890°F at the dome, and 810°F on the floor. The oven can refresh to target temperatures in 90 seconds because the temperature in the chamber is naturally stable, and a powerful under floor burner rapidly heats the floor to compensate for large conductive heat losses to the bottom of the pizza during the bake cycle. The oven can refresh to target temperatures between baking cycles in 90 seconds, so that a pizza can be baked every 3 minutes in verifiable measured conditions to produce twenty perfect Napoletana pizzas per hour

 

A large part of the technology is the defense of the infrared sensor from heat damage from very hot rising oven chamber gas. Powered ventilation, solenoid shutters and a sensor position outside of the baking chamber are used to prevent the sensor from burning. The intellectual property also includes ovens with ventilated exterior surfaces and ventilated doors, as well as ovens with floors that move up and down, and separate ventilation systems for the underfloor burner and the baking chamber. The design includes burners with variable outputs controlled so that heat supply is proportional to the degree of process deviation from target temperature.

 

The technology details the use of two manually adjustable fuel supplies for each of the two burner systems for the baking chamber and floor. The first fuel supply is opened and closed by the solenoid gas valve and is adjusted to supply the burner when the solenoid valve is open, and the system is gaining temperature or ramping. The second fuel supply is continuous and is adjusted so that the system loses temperature slowly when the solenoid valve is closed, and the system is losing temperature or soaking. Using the settings to provide gradual long ramps and soaks limits valve cycling and narrows the operating temperature range of the chamber or floor surface.

 

Multiple programs are possible to provide computerized automation of oven settings. The oven design includes an automated oven door that can be closed when the oven is at temperature, but not in use, to prevent hot air from heating the kitchen. The door can be open during baking cycles, as preferred. The oven has baking chamber lights and light that illuminates the bottom of the pizza when the edge is turned up by the chef. Decorative lighting may be used at the crown of the oven. A grease trap is part of the design so that the oven can be used to broil meats with or without a grate and pan to replace the refractory floor for broiling with the underfloor burner off.

 

Outdoor propane designs have been tested, as well as mobile designs for catering and food trucks. Indoor designs are particularly adaptable to small space. The oven would be particularly valuable in an environment where high rent makes the small size of the oven and pizzeria commercially advantageous. The adaptability of this oven makes it ideal for any number of restaurants; it can easily be used for more than the pizza it was designed to bake. A larger operation can purchase multiple ovens to scale for larger production, different oven settings for different pizzas, foodstuffs or chefs.

 

Materials needed to produce the The Langlioni Micro Oven™:

 

  • Angle tube and bar, stainless steel, mild steel, aluminum
  • Rock wool insulation material
  • Fasteners
  • Vent blower draft inducer
  • Forced air burner fans
  • IR Sensor cooling fan
  • Solenoid gas valves
  • Manual gas valves
  • Valve knobs
  • Plumbing Parts Gas Supply
  • Refractory Concrete estimated to be approximately
  • Infrared Sensors
  • J Thermocouple
  • Industrial Oven Controllers
  • Solenoid for Shutter
  • Carousel Drive Motor, Spring and Friction Wheel
  • Transformers
  • Electrical wire, switches, light fixtures, connectors, fuses

 

 

The The Langlioni Micro Oven™  is covered by United States Utility Patent: 10,624,353,   11,622,562   11,647,754

 

 

 

 

For additional information, licensing opportunities, and a full prospectus on The Langlioni Micro Oven™  contact:

 

 

BankOnIP

VP of Business Development

Email: info@BankOnIP.com