In an industrial continuous bread baking oven, dough/bread is travelling inside the oven chamber and it is the oven temperature distribution in this whole travelling period that dominates the product quality variations. To establish a model covering the temperature distribution of the whole oven chamber, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) may be the most effective method. This paper presents the results of a CFD study on an industrial continuous bread baking oven. A two-axis CFD model was established to simulate the temperature profile and airflow pattern due to the convective and radiation heat transfer. With several oven operating parameters including heat supply and fan volume, the heat distribution trend in the oven was satisfactorily simulated. Based on the simulation results, positioning of the controller sensors was investigated through a sensitivity study. The simulation results can also be used to modify the oven configuration for better heat distribution. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.