It took more than seven guys, a 15,000 lb. fork truck and an entire day, but it’s in! The new Matador MD 125 deck oven, which will soon be baking all of little t’s handcrafted breads and pastries. It’s a pretty flashy piece of equipment, complete with computer controls and German engineering! Enough so that it stopped traffic on Division Street for a while.

It’s unusual for a new baking oven to come assembled in one piece, and that created quite a big challenge. My friend Patricia Kennedy at Kemper USA gave me a great deal on this beauty, which was on display at the last International Bakery Exposition in Orlando in October, so I brought it home with me….well, at 10,000 lbs., I had it shipped. Until this week, it was in a warehouse in SW Portland. But thanks to Metro Machinery Rigging, it’s now safe and sound on Division. We only had a few inches of clearance getting through the front door, but we made it. Now, we can start finishing the walls and making the connections.

It won’t be long now, and the Matador will be fired up!