1.0 Introduction
An oven is an enclosed compartment for heating, baking or drying. It is most commonly used in cooking and pottery. Ovens used in pottery are also known as kilns. An oven used for heating or for industrial processes is called a furnace or industrial oven. In modern times the oven is used to cook and heat food in many households across the globe. Settlements across the Indus Valley Civilization were the first to have an oven within each mud-brick house by 3200 BC.
Culinary historians credit the Greeks for developing bread baking into an art. Front-loaded bread ovens were developed in ancient Greece. The Greeks created a wide variety of dough, loaf shapes and styles of serving bread with other foods. Baking developed as a trade and profession as bread increasingly was prepared outside of the family home by specially trained workers to be sold to the public. This is one of the oldest forms of professional food processing.
The Greeks also pioneered sweet breads, fritters, puddings, cheesecakes, pastries, and even wedding cakes. Often prepared in symbolic shapes, these products were originally served during special occasions and ceremonies. By 300 AD the Greeks had developed over seventy different kinds of bread. In cooking, conventional oven is a kitchen appliance and is used for roasting and heating. Food normally cooked in this manner includes meat, casseroles and baked goods such as bread, cake and other desserts.
Modern ovens are fueled by gas or electricity. When an oven is contained in a complete stove, the fuel used for the oven may be the same as or different from the fuel used for the burners on top of the stove.
Ovens use a variety of methods to cook. The most common may be to heat the oven from below. This is commonly used for baking and roasting. The oven may also be able to heat from the top to provide boiling. The oven, in order to provide faster and more-even cooking may convection ovens use a small fan to blow hot air around the cooking chamber. An oven may also provide an integrated rotisserie.
Ovens also vary by the method in which they are controlled. The simplest ovens (for example, the AGA cooker) may not have any controls at all, while the several other ovens are run continuously at various temperatures. More conventional ovens have a simple THERMOSTATS which turn the oven on and off and selects the temperature at which they will operate.
When set to the highest level, this may also activate the broiler element. A TIMER may allow the oven to be turned on and off automatically at pre-set times. More sophisticated ovens may have complex, computer-based controls allowing a wide variety of operating modes and special features including the use of a TEMPERATURE PROBE to automatically shut the oven off when the food is completely cooked to the desired degree.
Some ovens provide various aids to cleaning. Continuous cleaning ovens have the oven chamber coated with a CATALYTIC surface that helps break down (oxidize) food splatters and spills over time. SELF-CLEANING OVENS use PYROLYTIC DECOMPOSITION (extreme heat) to oxidize dirt. Steam ovens may provide a wet-soak cycle to loosen dirt, allowing easier manual removal. in the absence of any special methods, chemical oven cleaners are sometimes used or just old-fashioned SCRUBBING.
Outside the culinary world, ovens are used for a number of purposes.
A Furnace
Is used either to provide heat to a building or used to melt substances such as glass or metal for further processing. A blast furnace is a particular type of furnace generally associated with metal smelting (particularly steel manufacture) using refined coke or similar hot-burning substance as a fuel, with air pumped in under pressure to increase the temperature of the fire.
A Kiln
Is a high-temperature oven used in wood drying, ceramics and cement manufacture to convert mineral feedstock (in the form of clay or calcium or aluminum rocks) into a glassier, more solid form. in the case of ceramic kilns, a shaped clay object is the final result, while cement kilns produce a substance called clinker that is crushed to make the final cement product. (Certain types of drying ovens used in food manufacture, especially those used in malting, are also referred to as kilns.)
An Autoclave
Is an oven-like device with features similar to a pressure cooker that allows the heating of aqueous solutions to higher temperatures than water's boiling point in order to sterilize the contents of the autoclave.
Industrial Ovens
Are similar to their culinary equivalents, and are used for a number of different applications that do not require the high temperatures of a kiln or furnace.
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