Ovens !
This is a great site! I only joined recently and have had very helpful advice already. And I do need more.
My wife and I have finally passed all the bureaucratic hurdles to bake and sell bread from our home. We're re-purposing a living room as our bakery and we thought we had all our ducks in a row; but the biggest one has just stepped out of line. The oven. We had been guided toward the purchase of a Blodgett Sho E full size convection oven for baking artisan bread, but today a Blodgett customer service rep strongly advised to avoid the Sho E and purchase their XR8 Hydrovection oven instead. $3k vs $11k - $13k. This doesn't work; so back the drawing board. Love to hear form anyone making really good crusty bread in moderate volume (8-16 loaves) in an affordable oven.
I have always coveted the Moffat Turbofan steam injection ovens. Here's a link to their catalogue. Took a quick look online and the Turbofan E32D5 is showing around $US3,000, but wonder what installation, plumbing etc would cost........ Proofer looks good too!
Would it also have the 'problems' that Blodgett service rep referred to, or was he just trying to upsell........ I'm sure Moffat USA could put you in touch with happy clients to talk about their experiences.
Full disclosure: Moffat is a New Zealand company, with whom I have no affiliation. I see their units in cafes etc everywhere here and know one small scale baker using one, alongside his WFO (actually I covet both his ovens!)
I'll get in touch with Moffat USA. Their E32D5 does indeed look comparable in capacity to Blodgett's Sho E oven. And yes, pricing is close as well (and we've got some plumbing to do, so incorporating the Moffat into that plan does not seem overwhelming). The bi-directional fan and water injection sound just right, but the unit is only half the weight of the Sho, which may relate to less insulation, more clearance required, hotter bakery (?) Also, if this is a particularly good artisan bread oven, they aren't taking time to promote it as such. At any rate, I'll report my findings.
Cheers, Craig
But there are regular discussions about ovens on TFL. You should do a search (upper left of home page) and check the Advanced Topic/Professional forum as well (toward the bottom of the home page).
(assume nothing)
I had done a cursory search but was quickly reminded that crusty breadmaking is mostly associated with woodfired -- which is not an option for me. I hadn't discoverd the Advanced Topic forum. There's a whole education here indeed.
Try the "search" box at the upper left.