RackMaster RM24 Brick Oven

At Pleasant Hill Grain we were amazed by the RackMaster RM2020 oven when it was introduced. And now we're delighted by Campbell Macfarlane's latest creation. The RM24 oven puts all the greatness of his full-size oven in a package with a smaller footprint, and an even more affordable price!

The RackMaster RM24 oven provides both home and commercial baking enthusiasts with a no-compromise brick oven with robust construction and performance-enhancing features that not only help you make fantastic bread, but also make the process easier and more fun, too.

RackMaster reexamined every aspect of the electric stone oven and produced a design that’s simple and strong, with important advancements in many areas. Two of our favorites are the RackMaster’s heat control system that provides superbly even heating, and very high 572° F maximum heating. This level of heat energy in the oven’s thick 1-7/16" stones is what produces outstanding oven spring, resulting in the ideal thin, crispy crust and delectably light and flavorful internal crumb. Its vertical design conserves floorspace, and electric operation is clean, fast and trouble-free.

Two temperature dials control the heat; the left dial controls the top two elements and the right dial controls the bottom two elements. To heat just the top shelf for baking a partial-load, simply set the left dial to your desired temperature, and leave the right dial off, to conserve energy.

Masonry ovens (also called stone bread ovens, retained-heat ovens, or brick ovens) store massive heat energy in their brick or stone construction before food is introduced. Energy is then released to the food by conductive, radiant, and convective transfer. A conventional kitchen oven uses only convection (air circulation), which is far less effective than the conductive (direct contact) and radiant heat-transfer modes that a brick oven uses to produce superior baking results. Of all the tools, techniques and gadgets available to bakers, none can rival a quality brick bread oven at delivering professional-level results in your kitchen.

DRAMATICALLY BETTER BAKING

World renowned restaurants prefer masonry ovens for the superior texture and great depth of flavor they create in foods. Bread and pizza results are spectacular.

Once bread dough is slid onto the baking surface of a brick oven, baking time is about half that of a conventional oven. Steam is retained by the RackMaster’s very tightly-sealed door, maintaining humidity that promotes a rapid dough-rising burst called oven spring, as heat transfers rapidly by direct contact (conduction) with the thick Chamotte stone the dough rests on.

The RackMaster RM24 oven was created by Campbell Macfarlane, a sourdough bread baker himself and a household name in the sourdough community. He’s been a go-to resource for new and aspiring microbakers for the past decade, so it stands to reason he’d be the one to create the ideal micro baking oven. Raised in Scotland, Campbell has been a commercial kitchen equipment fabricator for years and he designed his oven to be exactly what microbakers need. Many products, including ovens, are “built to sell”. The RackMaster oven is built to work, and built to last. Leading microbaking advocate and bestselling author Maurizio Leo of The Perfect Loaf calls the RackMaster oven “fantastic”, saying he “couldn’t ask for anything different”.

We interviewed Campbell recently about the creation of his larger oven, the RM2020, and found his comments about steam management particularly insightful. It’s an aspect of the oven’s design that really puts it in a class by itself. (For full authenticity, read Campbell’s words with a Scottish brogue!)

"You need steam in the baking environment to keep the crust from forming too soon, so the loaf can expand optimally, and to create the perfect crisp, chewy crust. There’s a lot of water in your dough that’s released during baking and that water will provide most of the steam you need, sometimes all of it, if your oven can keep it in. When you introduce outside water to make steam, either with a tank or by injecting it, turning that water into steam removes a lot of heat energy from your oven. A lot. So adding outside water might sound good, but it’s actually bad for performance, bad for productivity. You want to conserve all the heat energy you can, otherwise your preheat will take longer, and the recovery time before your oven’s ready for another batch will be drawn out. These are fundamentals that apply to everyone.

Our RackMaster is robustly built. It’s heavy, and you want it to be. And it’s very well sealed; there’s no flex in the door and the latch handle draws the door down tight to eliminate leakage. We can bake back-to-back loads without supplemental water. Depending on the batch sometimes we’ll add a little water with a sprayer. But not a lot.”

VERSATILE PERFORMER

The magic of the RackMaster is by no means limited to bread and pizza! Roasted meats, steak, vegetables, casseroles, pies, croissants. You name it, the omni-directional, multimode heating of the brick oven bakes everything much, much better.

BRICK OR STONE, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MASS

The high-mass masonry of a retained heat oven works equally well whether the construction is stone or fire brick. If you've heard about the baking characteristics of a brick or stone bread oven, the results are identical with either. As a retained-heat masonry oven, the RackMaster provides exactly the same superior culinary results as wood-fired ovens, but with the convenience of clean electric heat generation.

Do you need a commercial deck oven? We also offer German-made Häussler commercial electric stone bread ovens: Häussler INO 2004 oven and Häussler's INO 2006-series ovens.