Baker's Pride question

Forgive my ignorance, but Baker’s Pride ovens are new to me, and I’m still trying to learn my way around.

My oven has a metal shelf in the very back of the oven, about half way between the floor and the ceiling of the oven. It extends from the back wall of the oven about 15 inches or so.

Can anyone tell me what this shelf is for, and how it’s used?

What model BP oven are you using?

Sounds like someone has added a shelf to keep pizzas warm. You cannot bake a pizza properly on that shelf.

George Mills

That being the case, you may not be able to bake a pizza properly under it either as the lowered shelf will most likely affect the top heat characteristics to the pizza under it. Just a thought.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

I’m not sure of the model- it was probably put in back in the 1970s or 80s (if you remember the old Mitch’s on Cass Lake, that’s the oven). I was thinking it could possibly be for browning the top of the pies (in our coal-fired oven, if we wanted more browning, we’d use the peel as a lever to hold the pie up closer to the top of the oven).

The only other thing I could possibly think of is if they were using it as a temporary place to put pies while they rotated the ones behind it??

Thanks for your help!

I was wondering about the top, too- I’m actually having flow-out and fusing issues with my low-moisture part-skim mozz.

Thanks for your response!

our Bakers Pride ovens, are designed to be two decks per oven, if you ordered that way… if the screen extends the whole length of the oven, then its for the brick to lay on. There is a heating element in the top, in the center and then in the bottom designed to heat the brick and cook the top of the pie sitting under it.

I know that Bakers pride are configured so that you only have one deck (so you can bake large loaves of bread and higher profile foods than just slide a pizza in. Some of our food barely fits, (we do grinders, and when piled high, the cheese sometimes gets on that top grating, so we have to watch and be sure to clean that off when it happens.

I pulled this image from a google search, but this is an older model than what we have… but this is what the two decks are like per door. (we have two doors on each ovens - each door section has a separate thermostat so if we only want ONE door section on when really slow, vs TWO, THREE or ALL FOUR the maximum giving us the ability to cook 8 large pizzas at a time if need be)… We typically only use one side, (two doors) and even in our busiest winter only need two ovens (meaning a total of 4 decks) on in the winter.

Hope this helps.
http://wiki.robotz.com/images/1/1b/356032_bakerspride-bar3.jpg

What model BP do you have?
George Mills