As its name suggests, a conveyor oven permits the operator to place uncooked foods on a moving surface (the conveyor belt), program the appliance to move the foods through the heated oven cavity at a particular speed, and also the foods emerges ready to serve. Conveyor ovens could be used to cook everything from meats and sandwiches to pastries and breads. Their advantage is item uniformity. At this writing, Burger King is testing a conveyor broiler program that promises 25 to 50 percent much less power use than broiling foods conventionally. Impinger/conveyor ovens are regular equipment in numerous busy food service facilities. One meaning from the word "impingement" is "to strike sharply," and that's the basic premise of the air impingement process in cooking: to blast high-velocity, heated air to the oven cavity.
The air is aimed to be concentrated on food that travels horizontally on a moving conveyor belt created of stainless steel or wire mesh. The belt could be adjusted to move at various speeds for various lengths of cooking time. The air moves with sufficient force to displace the organic layer of colder air that directly surrounds the piece of foods being cooked, resulting in a shorter cooking time than traditional ovens. Because impinger/conveyor ovens are automatic, high quality output is consistent with minimal staff supervision, and very little training is required to run the ovens. The hot-air jets are located above and below the conveyor. Some ovens even have separate controls for different zones within the oven, permitting the air temperature and pressure to become set independently.
This so-called zoned cooking is another function from the most technically sophisticated ovens. The air is forced through finger panels, which appear almost like screens, laced with little holes. Different types of panels are used to make various types of foods, but the basic premise is that items that cook quickly (e.g., a pizza) need panels with fewer holes to restrict airflow, while thicker items requiring longer cooking time (for example lasagna) need a lot more holes in the panels to permit a lot more hot air to hit them. Depending on the kind of foods, it can be placed in pans about the conveyor, from thin aluminum for fish or frozen french fries, to thicker stainless steel for pork chops. Porcelain cookware is also appropriate. If you'll be baking protein products-burgers, sausage, chicken, and also the like-look for ovens with built-in grease and smoke controls.
There are four various heat sources for impinger/conveyor ovens: Infrared and quartz models are electrical whilst natural-convection and forced-convection models may be gas powered or electric. No matter what the heat source, most models need a small electric motor to move the conveyor belt. The gas-fired ovens operate from 39,000 to 180,000 Btus; most are in the 70,000- to 75,000-Btu range. The electric versions need 10 to 27 kilowatts per hour and three-phase power. All of them need exhaust canopies. Temperatures in impinger/conveyor ovens variety from 300 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, and the conveyor speeds are variable. The conveyor belt is generally about seven feet long, even though only about three feet of it's located inside the baking chamber.
There are no doors on either side from the oven, but there's usually a small viewing door close to the middle so you are able to examine the progress from the cooking line or location items halfway down the belt if they do not require the full conveyor length to make. The most enthusiastic users of this oven are carry-out pizza restaurants, due to the speed and ease with which pizza can be cooked, but their manufacturers say conveyor ovens are versatile enough to become utilized a hundred various methods. Impinger/conveyor ovens can be double stacked and/or positioned on stands with casters. Options consist of twin belts, which run side by side at various speeds to make different foods simultaneously.
