ovens

On one TV show, they tested serveral different stoves. They decided that the best stove had an electric convection oven and gas cooking burners.

My first convection oven was small and had a small opening on the side and near the front of the oven for the fan to blow in the heat. It cooked the food on the top before the bottom cooked. I replaced this with a larger unit that has a larger opening in the center of the back for the blowing in of the heat. It works much better. I like it.

Gas used to have a reputation of being more consistant than electric. (maintaining the set temp) and heated faster.

Electric has improved a lot in recent years.

Fan forced convection ovens have their uses in providing an even heat, so avoiding the 'bake for 10 min then turn pans for the next 10 etc BUT some convection ovens do a bad job with some baking.

Best option in my opinion is a gas oven with normal / convection modes.

Thank you for your response. It is nice to hear from someone who has actually used an electric convection oven.

Good to know. I grew up with gas and my wife grew up with electric but did ABSOLUTELY zero baking.

So like most things in life, which is better depends on what you are baking. Thanks, I'll price out normal/convection ovens and compare to just convection ovens.

If you bake breads, I'd suggest not using convection ovens. Again, it depends on the kind of breads, but I find I get less oven spring and a less developed crust in a convection oven than in a regular oven or (better yet) a deck oven.

On the other hand, when I roast birds, what a convection oven does for the skin of the birds is just amazing!

Mike

Thanks for the response. I have 2 weeks to tell the builder whether I want gas or electric hook up for the stove. After that and they will charge me for changing the plans. It looks like I might want dual-fuel so I've told them to plan for both gas and electric to the stove. Even if I finally decided on just one, they'll both be there. 8^)

To me... It depends upon how much money you make, and where you live. Using the stove top, say in the south... (I'm from Houston Texas) where the summers are Loooong and HOT!, I always had an eletric oven, the simple fact is an electric oven takes the energy straight from the source to the pan... whereas a gas stove takes the fire and heats the pan and the air around the pan and eventually the whole house... Airconditioning cools the house "at best" 20° flower than the external ambient temperature... so.if it's 100° outside it will be 80° at best inside. If you cook on gas, imediately the inside of your house starts to warm up... substantually... thus turning on that compressor... thus making that little old disk in your meter go spinning around at an alarming rate.