Flame and Fortune - Choosing ovens for pub kitchens

The oven is the heart of every pub kitchen. But how does a pub choose which type to buy? Bob Gledhill gives some clues

There are pub kitchens that don't have a microwave, a few that don't have a deep-fat fryer, but none that don't have an oven; no pub that wants to offer a full meal service can do without one.

There are three types of oven suitable for a pub: the combi, the convection and the oven underneath a traditional six-burner range.

The most suitable oven for each pub will be dictated by its menu and number of meals being served; a small inn may cope

perfectly with the oven underneath the sixburner range, while a busy food operation will want a combi-oven and even possibly a convection oven too.

Traditional oven under a cooking range

This needs little introduction, but there are some important points when buying one. Despite claims sometimes made to the contrary, an oven that has no fan can be difficult to cook with. Because hot air rises there will be different temperatures in the various parts of the oven. There can even be hotter and cooler spots on the same shelf, which can mean problems cooking delicate products such as Yorkshire puddings and desserts. A circulatory fan spreads the heat far more evenly, so in theory, food placed on the top shelf should cook as evenly as that on the bottom. In practice, this doesn't always work perfectly if the design efficiency of the fan is not very good, but unfortunately, other than asking the salesman, there's no real way to find out the effectiveness of the fan until the oven starts cooking - and then it's too late.

It is not an unbroken rule, but usually, gas ovens under a cooking range do not have a fan, electric ones do, though of course you can specify a cooking range that has gas hobs above an electric oven.

When buying a traditional range with an oven underneath, you'll have to choose between light-duty, medium-duty and

heavy-duty - and there is no industry standard for these; one manufacturer's heavy duty is another's medium. The main

differences in the three are oven size, and longevity of use. As a general guide, only a very small food operation should specify light duty. Most pubs should opt for medium-

duty, and very busy food operations should choose heavy-duty.

Combi-ovens

As its name suggests, a combi-oven combines several cooking functions in one piece of kitchen equipment. It uses fandriven dry heat and steam, which is injected into the oven when the food being cooked needs it. Most are able to have cooking programmes set into the control panel to deliver consistency. The steam comes from an internal steam boiler or by mists of water being sprayed onto heated elements in the oven. The amount of steam is highly controlled, from a slight hot mist for giving a crunchy crust on frozen bread rolls to a full steam environment for vegetables.

Combi-oven sizes are described as grids; a rather complicated way of denoting the number of shelves, which determines the overall size of the oven. Normal entry-level for a combi is six grids (shelves), but there are a few smaller ones and they go up to 20 grids. Most pubs can cook efficiently with a six-grid combi-oven.

Some benefits of cooking with combi ovens:

Meat - Having gentle steam in the oven during roasting minimises weight loss and produces a more tender joint. Up to a third of the weight of a piece of meat can be lost during dry roasting through loss of the water content. The last part of the cook cycle is just dry heat to crisp the outside.

Fish - Steaming ensures this delicate food doesn't breaking up and keeps all its flavour.

Vegetables - Retain more of their taste, nutritional value and natural colour when steamed than if cooked in boiling water.

Baking - By operating as a fan-driven convection oven, baked goods are evenly and crisply cooked.

Re-heating - Food that has been precooked and chilled prior to service - such as Yorkshire puddings and vegetables - can be rapidly brought up to serving temperature, avoiding the need to keep food hot for long periods which leads to flavour loss and drying out.

Combi-ovens can seem expensive, but for the busy food pub, the payback period will be quick.

Convection ovens

These are mostly used for baking. They have a circulatory fan and the better ones have the ability to inject a little steam, but not as much as a combi-oven can. A busy pub where the menu mix has a high percentage of baked goods - breads, pastries, frozen goods that need quick finishing or traditional desserts such as puddings - may benefit from having a convection oven as well as a standard range and a combi. Thus, the combi, which can do everything the convection oven can, would be freed up for roasting meat and potatoes and re-heating precooked veg.

Having all three types of oven only works when the food output is very high. Even then, it might be a better buying decision to get a smaller, second combi-oven.

Energy efficiency

When chefs pay such careful attention to controlling food waste, why not apply the same rules to energy waste? The price of gas has leapt considerably in the past 12 months and all oven manufacturers have recognised that energy efficiency is a strong selling point.

Two ovens can look almost identical, but have a burning efficiency as much as 15% apart - consider how this would translate to a saving on the business's annual gas bill.

One might imagine that all the gas that comes through the cooking range and burns, will produce 100% heat conversion efficiency, but that's not true.

Gas burner efficiency is about mixing the right amount of oxygen with the gas to provide the maximum heat during combustion. The easiest way to illustrate this is the classic classroom Bunsen burner. When the air valve is closed, the flame burns soft and yellow with a low heat. When the air valve is opened, the flame becomes fierce and blue. The same amount of gas is being used, but the heat output between the blue flame and the yellow flame is hugely different. Always ask the oven salesman about the efficiency of the burner jets in the oven.

Converse views on combis

Ronnie Rusack, the Bridge Inn, near Edinburgh

Just how unsure some pub chefs are about technology in ovens is highlighted by the view of Ronnie Rusack, owner of the busy food-led Bridge Inn near Edinburgh. Rusack says that when they last refurbished, combi-ovens were considered, but the decision was taken to stay with conventional ovens because of a belief that combi-ovens were too complicated.

"When too much technology comes into the kitchen, problems soon follow," says Rusack. "We had a problem with a computer-controlled blast freezer that stopped working. We had to shut it all down and reprogramme it. "Cooking, to me, is about good ingredients and simple techniques. If we were to refurbish tomorrow I'd look again at combi-ovens, but I'd take some convincing that one would be as reliable as a simple oven. We need to worry about the food on the plate, not the computers in the oven."

Ray Scarbrow, owner of the Live & Let Live in Pegsdon, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, however, believes any pub with a busy restaurant business should have a combi-oven as a core part of its cooking equipment.

"When I bought the Live & Let Live, it was run down and had been closed for a year," he explains. "I started from scratch with the kitchen,chucking out all the old equipment.

"My local equipment distributor said I should install a combi-oven as an essential part of the new food operation. I went into the showroom expecting to pick to pieces his argument in favour of a combi-oven for a small pub, but in half an hour of looking and listening I was convinced a food-driven freehouse like mine could see a business benefit from buying a combi-oven."

Big is beautiful

Rational has added a larger model to its SelfCooking Center (SCC) range. The SCC 62 features twice