Ok, I’ve given the fire bricks their chance, and it’s a no go.
They are simply just too hot.
I made some adjustments to the brick configurations to hopefully help. I reduced the number of bricks to allow for more space around them to allow for more steam to rise to the top, and I raised them up an inch to hopefully make them not as hot (aka further away from the heat source). This didn’t really work. I made some challah yesterday and had to pull the loafs before the tops were really browned enough as the bottoms were about to burn.
Ah well, it was a $13 experiment.
…maybe I can use them in my grill 🙂