Food industry is commonly among the top ten energy most intensive industrial branches. Its annual energy requirements record constant increase. Within the food industry, bakeries are one of the largest energy consumers, due to the energy requirements of the baking ovens, which account for more than a half of the total energy required in the whole production process. The baking oven, a key element of every bakery, directly influences the time and energy efficiency of the production process itself, but also the quality and the cost of the final product. Due to the strict food safety and quality regulations and requirements, improvement of the existing processes is usually related to the significant technical, ecological and economical challenges. In the frame of here presented work, an innovative baking oven concept is proposed and developed. The core of this novel baking oven is an employment of the specific properties of the volumetric ceramic burners (VCB) in order to improve overall baking process performances. The VCB principles of operation, its features and characteristics of NIR thermal emissions are discussed in order to provide the basic understanding of the proposed concept and properties of the developed baking oven prototype. With the help of the innovative Validated Virtual Engineering (VVE), a fully functional prototype of the novel baking oven in industrial scale size is designed. In this way, costly conventional trial-and-error procedures are avoided. The simulation tools enable virtual analysis of various constructional and operational modifications of the baking oven. Amongst others, the influence of the burners shape and their planar distribution, the influence of the quartz glass in front of the burners and the design of the exhaust gas guiding system and its recirculation, were investigated. The validation experiments proved i.a. the operating stability of the designed prototype in a wide power and air-fuel equivalence ratio range, the homogeneity of the thermal radiation and the uniform temperature distribution over the baking plates. This novel, VCB-based, gas-powered, deck oven combines the advantages of near-infrared (NIR) thermal radiation, mainly in the wavelength range of 1.3-1.7 μm, with the unique control dynamics, enabling fast power adjustment to the production process requirement. Furthermore, new findings were extracted out of the numerous experimental investigations, regarding the influence of the novel VCB-based baking oven concept on the product quality and improved energy efficiency, production ecology and economy of the baking process. Using 800 g wheat bread loaves, baking properties of the newly developed oven were compared with the baking properties of the conventional electric deck oven of the same size and geometry. The analysis showed that the VKB oven provides the baked goods of the comparable quality and similar sensory properties i.a. crust thickness, desired crust color, crumb porosity, taste, smell, elasticity, etc. In addition, the VCB-based baking oven reduces preheating and baking time of up to 20 %. The resulting reduced fuel input and the use of gas heating instead of electrical energy provide the significant saving of the primary energy and reduction of CO2 emis-sion. The presented results demonstrate the suitability of the innovative baking oven concept with regard to the product quality, process economy and ecology. At the same time, they confirm the high untapped potential of the application of the porous VCB technology in the food industry.