A Better Way to Heat Your Deck Ovens
Most deck ovens are basically big boxes that try to heat up every single inch of air inside. It’s a waste. You’re spending a ton of energy just to warm up the walls and the empty space around your bread. We’ve found a better way using short-wave infrared (IR) heaters. Instead of waiting for the air to get hot, IR sends energy straight into the dough. It’s like stepping into the sun on a cold day—you feel the heat instantly, even if the air around you is still chilly. Why this actually matters Because we’re targeting the food and not the oven walls, you don’t have to spend forever preheating. It’s fast. Really fast. And that changes everything for your daily workflow. Plus, your kitchen stays cooler. You aren’t pumping massive amounts of waste heat into the room, which makes life a lot easier for whoever is actually doing the baking. The technical side of things Now, to get that professional-grade crust, these heaters need a lot of power. But here’s the catch: that concentrated energy can be hard on your electronics. If your control boards and relays aren’t built to handle the initial surge of power when the lamps kick in, they’ll burn out. It’s something you have to get right from the start. We use quartz envelopes to let those IR rays through. They work great, but they’re fragile. If you just bolt them in, the oven’s natural expanding and contracting will crack the glass. We use vibration-dampening mounts to give them some breathing room. Living with IR heaters The best part? These can often slide right into the spot where your old heating coils used to be. Since they heat up almost instantly, you get incredible control. You can run different zones at different temps, meaning you can bake a variety of products in one deck without waiting for the whole stone to shift temperatures. Just one tip:**keep the quartz tubes clean.**If grease builds up on the glass, it creates hot spots. That’s a one-way ticket to a broken tube. Keep them spotless, and they’ll take care of you.