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My aunt wants to start her own bakery where she is planning to sell different kinds of biscuits, cakes, and desserts. But she cannot afford to buy an industrial oven right now as she wants to start small.

So my questions are,

  • What types of oven (traditional, convection, convection-microwave, etc.) are best for commercial scale baking (especially cakes)?
  • What are the most important qualities of a commercially available oven/microwave for good, consistent baking results?
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  • You may want to see this Q/A about convection microwave ovens.
    – Stephie ♦
    Mar 10, 2019 at 6:51
  • Thanks for the link. But that question only answers that we cannot expect good result from convection microwave oven. Which just discard convection microwave from my list. Can you please recommend which one is good for baking? I am editing my question.
    – arif
    Mar 10, 2019 at 6:55
  • This is why I gave you the link: for further information instead of closing as a duplicate.
    – Stephie ♦
    Mar 10, 2019 at 6:57
  • Welcome to the site! Unfortunately your question is off-topic as it's both too broad and opinion based. There are many ovens and what is available is dependent on your location, what she can buy is limited to budget.
    – GdD
    Mar 10, 2019 at 8:55
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    @GdD I read this question as “what type of domestic oven is best suited for this specific use case”, asking for characteristics of different oven types. This should be answerable based on technical details, not just opinion?
    – Stephie ♦
    Mar 10, 2019 at 20:41

2 Answers 2

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I'm not going to claim this is an exhaustive list, especially as I'm not a commercial baker, but a few things that I would personally consider:

What is she baking? What size vessels does it need? How tall does it rise? This will affect how can she fit in the oven at one time (how many per shelf, how many shelves for the height it needs). Note that you don't want to pack them too closely, as you need space around them, even for convection.

What is the largest sheet pan it can fit with a couple of inches (5+ cm) around each side?

If electric, how much power does she have available? (will it require getting an electrician in to run heavier wire?)

I'd also look to see if there are any places that deal in used restaurant equipment. In the US, restaurants have a rather high failure rate, and there are places that specialize in liquidating restaurants / auctioning off everything in them.

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A good thermostat which will hold correct temperature for long time is the most important thing, but I don't know how you can check that.

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  • I was thinking of that, but I don't think it's that important. My own aunt had a successful bakery business using a traditional wood fired oven. No thermostat, temperature changing constantly. Some the good home bakers I know also have ovens with very bad thermostats. Especially for somebody doing commercial, it is less important than for normal home use. As a bakery, you don't try new recipes all the time, you gather enough experience to make your recipe work with your oven's idiosyncrasies. Especially since bad thermostats don't "jump around", they have a constant offset.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Mar 12, 2019 at 12:09
  • You have issues with 'precision' vs. 'accuracy'. An inaccurate oven might be 50 degrees off ... and if you know that, you're fine and can correct for. An imprecise oven is bad, as you don't know how far off it is at any given time. Most are imprecise to some degree (wait 'til the temperature drops below a lower threshold, heat back up 'til you hit a higher threshold,etc.). It's the precision that you have to be careful about ... and how evenly it heats if it's not convection.
    – Joe
    Mar 12, 2019 at 19:15

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