{"id":2230,"date":"2019-09-26T11:04:05","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T11:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wood-firedoven.co.uk\/?p=2230"},"modified":"2020-01-07T16:37:26","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T16:37:26","slug":"bakery-ovens-fixed-or-rotating-hearths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wood-firedoven.co.uk\/bakery-ovens-fixed-or-rotating-hearths\/","title":{"rendered":"BAKERY OVEN-FIXED OR ROTATING HEARTH?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bakery oven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bakery oven – the possibilities are endless with Four Grand-Mere<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Above you can see a bakery oven we built at Farnham Pottery in Surrey, artfully shot in sepia tone to make it look timeless. The installation is on our project page tab here<\/a> and shows a brick clad Four Grand-Mere F1500 brick oven designed to look like one of the original brick bottle kilns that have survived on site. It is small by bakery oven standards, only 1500Lx950W but as a community enterprise, our brief was people should find it easy to use and not hard to fill on a single bake.<\/p>\n

Bakery ovens were traditionally of fixed hearth design, where a fire would be set on the hearth and kept going until the mass of the oven was charged with heat. Once swept and cleaned of all embers, the baker could then load the proofing loaves into the oven when happy that the heat was stable enough to bake.<\/p>\n

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Firing a fixed hearth oven at the Weald and Downland living museum<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The problem with this style of baking is that the baking loaves would draw heat from the mass of the oven and leave the baker no option but to eventually fire up the oven again, effectively stopping the bakers output.<\/p>\n

The solution was found with the advent of the ‘Gueulard’ oven, a clever innovation where the heat was generated from burning wood in a separate firebox, usually under the hearth but occasionally to the side and the hot flames would enter the oven via a cast iron tube called a gueulard<\/em> . This enabled the baker to keep the temperature up without stopping baking so increasing the output if there was the demand. Here is a quick video of a gueulard in operation…..<\/p>\n