Batch Oven Photo Courtesy of International Thermal Systems, LLC.

The biggest issue with cooking an elaborate Thanksgiving meal is getting the timing right. Figuring out when to put what in the oven, how long each item needs to cook and getting it all out and on the table at once is quite a fete. It makes me thankful that I have parents who love cooking the Thanksgiving meal and will always welcome me at their table. Even so, before the meal is actually served it can be a very stressful environment. What would make the lives of my parents and thousands of other Thanksgiving makers easier would be to own a batch oven.

Batch ovens are not usually found in residential contexts but in large scale restaurants, bakeries and other food related businesses. That is because these industrial ovens are defined by their large size and their ability to contain and bake many products at the same time. Large is a very general term, and within that spectrum a variety of sizes exists. A batch oven may be small enough to be considered a portable oven (although still larger then a residential oven) or large enough to be considered a walk-in oven. How the oven produces and retains heat depends on the application it is being used for, and although the food industry uses batch ovens most often, other industries utilize these ovens too.

A bakery oven will often use electric coils to heat up the batch oven space since cooking or baking food takes the least amount of heat. Gas fired ovens are also used in the food industry, and they can reach higher temperatures then the electric coil ovens. The convection heating technique, which transfers heat between gases, fluids and solids to create an even heat in a large space, is the most common in industrial settings that practice heat-treating, curing and similar processes.