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Winner 2008 Hepburn Regional Tourism Association Tourism Awards - Food & Hospitality Category |
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About Red Beard
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What is a scotch oven?Scotch Ovens are traditional wood-fired commercial baker’s ovens, made of brick with cast iron fittings. They have an arched roof, a fire box on one side of the main chamber and a flue on the opposite side. The internal layer of bricks is encased in a bed of sand and the whole oven is tied together with steel rods top and bottom, allowing the oven to contract and expand without pulling itself apart. Scotch Ovens, work by storing heat in their massive masonry structures – called thermal mass - which is released gradually and smoothly. The fire can be extinguished before baking commences so that the bread is bathed in deep and even heat rather than searing heat from burning coals. Our 25 square metre, 75 tonne Scotch Oven stores enough heat from one firing to bake 800 loaves of bread. Most good modern bakeries now use electric/gas multi-level deck ovens. In recent times they have tried to recapture the benefits of thermal mass by reintroducing fire bricks on the floor of each level, but the bread produced is still inferior. Scotch Ovens were the most common commercial oven in Australia - a guild of Scottish bakery engineers built them throughout the British Empire for over 200 years. Only a few remain today because in the 1950s most were bought out by the large flour mills who destroyed them to eliminate competition for their new white supermarket breads (see History). Red Beard's 25 square metre, 75 tonne Scotch oven in Trentham stores enough heat from one firing to bake 800 loaves of bread. It is around 120 years old. When you visit, please ask the bakers for a look at this hard-working piece of history.
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