Improving the performance of your batch oven is essential for improving product yields and consistency, as well as process efficiency.
When trying to improve your batch oven, there are three points of control to look at:
Making these three points of control work together will help refine your process.
We’ll walk you through how in this article.
The way trucks are loaded into a smokehouse or dehydrator greatly affects the creation and strength of the breakpoint — and can have a negative impact on the consistency of the product.
Anytime you add an object, like a smokehouse truck, into the flow of air, you change the way that airstream moves. It will either break apart or diminish if it’s hitting a wall, or it will flow around the object into a new path.
Overload product onto a truck and you’ll create a wall that prevents air from moving across the product. Under load product or trucks in the oven, and air will flow to the place of least resistance.
This is why it’s critically important to know the best ways to load trucks into a smokehouse or dehydrator.
Oven airflow plays a crucial role in producing a better, more consistent cooked product.
The breakpoint air stream, formed where the high- and low-velocity airflows collide, is ultimately what cooks your product — replacing the cold area around your product with the hot air that will cook it.
It goes without saying, then, that the oven airflow has the ability to either over-cook or under-cook your product, depending where it’s located on your smokehouse truck. The closer your product is to the breakpoint, the more it gets cooked — producing a darker color, greater yield loss, and making your product drier.
The reverse is also true: the further from the breakpoint, the longer your product takes to cook — producing a lighter color, less yield loss, and not drying your product as much. The longer cook time is what causes the product closer to the breakpoint to over-cook.
We explained the science behind all this in our ultimate guide to the oven breakpoint.
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