WEST CONCORD — What weighs 16 tons, is made in France, and turns out 320 loaves an hour? It’s an oven, of course. But the Fringand Olympic is not just any oven. This brick-and-copper-faced beauty is the brand-new workhorse at Nashoba Brook Bakery, a retail and wholesale operation that produces 4,000 loaves daily. The oven doubles the bakery’s bread-making capacity, and, according to Stuart Witt, a co-owner and baker, it arrived not a moment too soon.
“We were desperate for more oven space,’’ says Witt. Sales of the bakery’s crusty, rustic bread grew 25 percent last year. The little cafe on the banks of the Nashoba Brook — so close that last month’s floods put the outdoor patio under water — accounts for only about one-fifth of bread sales; the remaining loaves are sold in area markets.
The new Fringand Olympic was fired for the first time last week. Witt and fellow owner John Gates (the two have been friends since high school) considered other models before deciding to add a Fringand to the one they already had. The $90,000 oven is manufactured by Fours Fringand in Illange, a town in northeast France. It is to a home oven what a Bradley tank is to a Mini Cooper.
Photo Caption: Stuart Witt (left), co-owner of Nashoba Brook Bakery in West Concord, toasts (and points to) Robert Kaiser (right), who came from France to install the bakery’s new Fours Fringand oven.
Photo Credit: Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff
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