When it comes to ovens, the heat is on. Bakeries can choose from a menu of hot options, ranging from convection, radiant, electric, thermal oil and hybrid systems to bake their products.

“Bakers are increasingly looking for ovens equipped with versatile and automatic, repeatable settings that enable precise adjustment of the baking process to meet their exacting product quality standards,” noted Franck Ellenbogen, sales director North America, Mecatherm.

Mecatherm’s M-TA oven, for instance, provides convection and radiant heat or a combination of both.

“This capability is made possible because each oven cell functions independently, allowing bakers the flexibility to tailor their baking approach according to specific quality requirements,” he said. “For example, if you are aiming to achieve uniform product coloring, you can use convection in the final baking cell. Conversely, customers desiring a gradient effect can achieve this by predominantly using radiation in the same zone.”

Overall, the use of turbulence has greatly improved tunnel oven efficiency, suggested Jerry Murphy, vice president of sales, Gemini Bakery Equipment. He said the turbulence in a Gemini/Werner & Pfleiderer indirect-fired oven is flow adjustable and can be from top-to-bottom or from bottom-to-top. 

“Another significant product quality advantage is a more consistent and uniform product bake and bake color, especially for panned breads,” Murphy said.

Phil Domenicucci, baking systems specialist, AMF Bakery Systems, said the amount of convection is very important. Typically, most ovens with forced convection have anywhere from 100 feet per minute (fpm) to 500 fpm of air movement, which is suitable for most bread and bun products.

“As you increase the convection, the airflow will impinge directly on the product,” he explained. “This type of convection air flow is referred to as impingement and can have air movement from 1,000 to 5,000 fpm or more depending on the type of product. This condition is suitable for products with shorter baking times and stable surfaces such as pizzas. Hybrid ovens can be equipped with static zones, convection zones and impingement zones”

Jerry Barnes, vice president, Babbco, pointed out that newer convection ovens recirculate the hot air within the bake chamber for much improved efficiency and are most often powered by fewer burners employing a larger turndown ratio and requiring less maintenance. 

“That is akin to the advances from a three-speed automatic transmission to today’s modern 10-speed units,” he said. “The modern software and hardware work together to minimize energy use.”

By mixing convection and radiant heat, bakers can tailor the overall heat transfer in their ovens to reach the desired result on their baked goods, said Nicola Menardo, president, TP Food Group North America. Digital controls, he added, can adjust baking parameters more quickly and precisely than in manual operations to react to changes in the bakery’s environment.

In recent years, the electrical controls of ovens have become more advanced with data points capable of being extracted from a PLC and analyzed offline at a management level.

“As utility costs continue to rise, having full visibility of the energy consumption of the baking process is becoming of greater importance for bakery management,” said Cameron Johnston, senior director of innovation, Reading Bakery Systems.

Monitoring gas usage not only helps bakers understand production costs, but it can also indicate potential faults in a system.

“For instance, if fuel utilization increases compared to a stabilized norm, it would alert that something within the system has changed,” Johnston explained. “Has the tuning of a burner or burners caused a change in gas consumption? Is there an area within the oven that is leaking an excessive amount of heat that is offsetting the fuel usage?”

This article is an excerpt from the August 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Ovens, click here.