As any passionate baker or bakery owner will know, choosing the right oven is essential for making the perfect cheesecake or sourdough bread. In fact, the type of oven you use for baking is most often the reason why one will taste infinitely better than the next. And in case you might be wondering, convection ovens and deck ovens are the two most popular types of oven.
As a rule, oven manufacturers are tasked with helping these bakeries improve the taste and appearance of delicious products. Needless to say, the proof is quite literally in the pudding!
When you think about it, this also removes a lot of guesswork for bakers, for they can now focus on the ingredients or process and forget any questions regarding the competence of a particular oven.
But what's so important or different about these two ovens?
A convection oven is highly versatile and known for baking while heating the products evenly throughout. If you need to bake with various temperatures, convection ovens excel and the main feature of this type of oven is that heat is generated in the oven through a fan blowing hot air.
Surely this combination of features is unbeatable? Well, not exactly.
You see, deck ovens provide a consistent feed of heat into the chamber and the temperature can be tweaked ever so slightly during the baking process. What's more, deck ovens can accommodate more than one product at a time which makes them especially useful for baking bread and pastry. Also, a deck oven can bake break right around the clock which makes it highly productive.
For this reason, you will often find a deck oven at the heart of the best bakeries. In fact, many bakers won't work with anything less, and they cite this machine as the secret behind their bread.
In short, a deck oven is the perfect combination of quality and quantity.
As for the difference between these two ovens, it's obviously down to the way in which heat is transferred to the products. However, a deck oven can also add steam to the oven which gives bakers an upper hand when it comes to experimenting and being creative.
But what feature is better - a deck oven run by gas or electricity?
The truth is, it really depends on the cost of utilities in your specific region. However, it's important to note that a gas deck oven is limited to a set temperature and this can stifle the process in terms of baking a variety of products. On the other hand, an electric deck oven enables the baker to change the temperature on multiple decks - something any baker or bakery will truly appreciate.
In summary, convection ovens might be more versatile but the reliability and performance of a deck oven make it somewhat superior and this is most especially true when it comes to baking bread.