Upgrading out of the home oven
I have been searching for different oven options online and here on FTL with minimal success.
Ill start with where I am at as a baker currently and where I want to go and need help with.
I am baking in a home oven that will bake 2 dutch oven loaves at a time. I make any where from 10-20 loaves per week with the constraint of doing more being an oven capacity and efficiency.
I would like to be baking 20 loaves a day or a big bake of 100 loaves a day with the idea to grow small and into a bakery of my own. I have an offer to use a commercial convection oven to bake bread after hours if I can produce good baguettes. I am also struggling to find people talking about baking in convection ovens as I know bread ideally uses deck ovens so information on convection bread baking is highly welcome!
Some of the thoughts I have about an oven are building a brick oven, trying to find a rental space with a deck oven, purchasing a deck oven that will still be relevant in a commercial setting in the sense that it will grow with my operation. I am leaning toward the deck oven and pursuing some other oven uses until that happens. As for the brick oven, I have thought about building one on a trailer more then on the ground since I am currently renting.
Any thoughts, tips, advice, oven suggestions, and stories of home bakers growing into more are very very welcome!
Thank you
J!
J, have never done any commercial baking, so take my comments with a grain of salt. First, do you have space, right safety equipment, and the electrical hookups to run a commercial deck oven in your current location. If you do, it is pretty easy to find used commercial ovens on craigslist near me, though most of them are convection ovens. The benefit of that approach is that if you shop wisely, and then outgrow it, you should be able to sell it for what you paid for it. Of course, you will need the appropriate electric supply, fireproof materials and setbacks, etc.
As to brick ovens, what power source are you thinking of ? Gas, electric, wood? I don't know how cost effective a brick oven may be, but from what I have read, they take a long time to heat up, and a long time to cool down. Building your own on a trailer may be pretty complex. If you decide to look into that route, definitely do some reading here https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?board=51.0 and here https://community.fornobravo.com/. While much of that information is about pizza ovens, much of the construction techniques and materials will be similar, though the height of the dome will be different. There is some discussion of bread ovens and their design as well.
These are great questions and only some of them I have thought of.
Safety and power sources are things I hadn't put a lot of thought into yet. Its more a situation where I get information like this and process it and try to keep the ball moving forward!
I have been scanning CL and some other used restaurant equipment places and have had hard luck with anything deck oven related in my area. I am trying to avoid convection ovens as bread is my focus and those have drawbacks for bread.
Brick oven power source would be wood for sure. The trailer complexities can get worked out as there is a rather diverse and talented pool of acquaintances. The trailer just lends possible interesting avenues for bread and for some novelty!
Thank you for the reply as it did help to add very needed thought to the problems I am looking to sort out and these points were very relevant. Some of my comments in this reply are no doubt my writing out so mental drafting, so thanks for bearing with that as well!
Hi J Christie if you care to look up Varda her blog stretches to over 140 pages and is a long time member that has done what you are looking to do.
In particular regarding oven upgrades see this. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35817/cadco-oven
I was in contact with Varda when she was looking to upgrade and told her of the ovens that we had just installed at a technical college here in Western Australia which were replacing an old and very unreliable electric deck oven and how happy we were with the ovens which were identical to the Cadco but with Italian branding and quite a bit dearer than Cadco in the States. Im sure if you follow Varda's journey you will be most impressed. kind regards Derek
J, I have no personal experience with using a wood fired brick oven for bread baking, but the sites I listed will give you tons of info on wood fired brick ovens - modular, brick, and other kinds. You will see lots of references to Pizza Party ovens, but they are metal with insulation, and probably would require a tremendous amount of wood to keep running all day, and it much smaller than what you are looking for, assuming you want to bake 20 or more loaves at a time.
I do have a Cadco, but it is the smallest one, just big enough for a DO or combo cooker. As you go up in size, you need to increase power - first step up is 240 volts, rather than the common 120, and next step, which is only available at some commercial locations, is 3 phase power supply.
Good luck in your journey.
I will start sifting through this and see what I can learn!
Thanks for the link!