Gas Deck Oven for Cottage Food Operation
Assuming one was planning to operate a small cottage food business out of their home, and had the space for it, what would be your best advice for that person as far as choosing an oven goes?
This, from someone who knows nothing about gas deck ovens. Zero. Where the oven needs to go, there's a gas hookup, 110v and 220v service.
Looking around, I see lots of "pizza ovens" like this triple-deck monster on craigslist:
https://inlandempire.craigslist.org/bfs/4649916731.html
These are the sort of ovens people use for hearth-baked breads, no?
Here's a few loaves I just took from the oven (sorry about the cell-phone photo!), and these are the sort of loaves I'd be looking to make.
Do I need steam to do this? I'm baking in double dutch ovens in a cheap gas oven now. I'm assuming that I'll probably have to rig something up for steam unless I come into a small fortune.
Where I live, gas is super cheap, electricity is pretty expensive.
What are the pitfalls associated with buying used deck ovens like this? I assume they are generally built to last forever, and that anything one would buy in a parking lot (like the above oven) would require some service before it was useful.
Thanks in advance for any sage advice!
My first thought is, will a pizza oven be tall enough for bread loaves?
Also, give some thought to how many loaves you will bake at a time and the oven capacity you will need. There are also the issues of whether you will need to turn the oven on and off, how long it will take to come up to temperature, and when and how often you will bake each day.
Steam will be a challenge. I've been getting good crusts simply by spraying the loaves with water just before putting them into the oven. This dissolves the sugars on the surface of the dough ball, causing them to caramelize.
Chris, you can make bread in any oven, things are easier if the oven is designed for baking bread. The bread you just took out of that oven looks great. I suggest you search ebay as well - there are some very nice products specifically designed for baking bread, though most of them are electric. Here is one example which is both a proofer and a deck oven with windows so you can see what is going on http://www.ebay.com/itm/electric-oven-bakery-/171424088283?pt=BI_Commercial_Ovens_Ranges&hash=item27e9ac00db If you do buy a used gas oven, I would want someone to go through it and service it. Most of the commercial electric and gas ovens are very well built, but you certainly don't want your building to catch on fire, so a service call is a great idea.
There's so many options out there. Electric, gas, steam tube, steam-injected deck, unsteamed pizza ovens...it's kind of confusing. It didn't even occur to me to ask, but is there a reference available that discusses the various ovens available to the bread baker?
Ovens are mentioned in passing in a number of my bread books. I have a couple of books about building wood-fired ovens...but I haven't found anything that discusses commercial ovens in depth (or superficially for that matter).
These pages might give you some ideas:
http://www.webstaurantstore.com/22133/gas-combination-ovens.html
http://www.webstaurantstore.com/43745/bakery-deck-ovens.html
Ditto what Barry said about safety considerations.
Also, what would you do if your oven conked out?