Monday, October 5, 2009

Commercial Ovens - Quality and Control

By Jeremy Starkle

An essential appliance in every kitchen, ovens are often closed compartments that are used for baking or heating purposes. Commercial ovens are efficient machines often found in restaurant kitchens that demand a high turnover of food and accuracy in baking methods. The oven has been around for centuries, with artefacts of ovens found by archaeologists which date back to 3200 BC. However it was the ancient Greeks that refined the baking process, inventing the front-load oven that was used to bake all types of dough into bread and even cakes, very similar to what we use today.

While having the capacity to produce breads, cakes, and other baked goods, commercial ovens can also be used for roasting savoury foods such as meat or casseroles. In an industrial sense, ovens can even be used to fire up non-food items like clay or other building materials. The only real duty of the oven is to provide an intense yet controllable amount of heat, which can be channelled into whatever a person needs heated up.

The heat source in commercial ovens can come from the top or the bottom, which has a different effect on the way the food is cooked. For casseroles or food like lasagne in which a browned top is best, placing it close to a top-heating source is the way to go. However, for baked goods where an even cooking is desired, a bottom heat source is better. When in doubt, place the food in the middle of the oven.

Commercial ovens are heated using either gas or electricity. In the past, these were fired by coal or wood, and wood is still used in certain circumstances in commercial kitchens, such as in the preparation of pizza. Cooking with wood imparts some of the smoky flavour into the food. Convection ovens use a fan to move the air around the interior of the chamber, and steam ovens use a bit of water to add steam into the chamber. All of these types of ovens can be adjusted depending on what someone is cooking.

Amazingly, commercial ovens have the power to clean themselves. For anyone who has spent hours trying to scrub off burnt bits from the bottom of an oven, this comes as a great surprise! There are two types of methods in which this can happen. Self-cleaning ovens use a blast of extreme heat to burn off the dirt, thus dissolving it in this manner. Continuous cleaning ovens on the other hand, are coated on the inside with a catalytic substance that works in opposition with the dirt, dissolving it slowly over time.

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