Long story short, it looks like we’ll be replacing our double wall oven (bottom oven works fine, top oven triggers an error whenever we try to use it, a repairman wanted well over 300 dollars to even LOOK at it…). Assuming we don’t decide to just start using the TOP oven for storage and the BOTTOM one for baking, we’d be looking at replacing the whole unit, sigh.
Using a line of GE models for comparison, 500 dollars moves me from what we have now (upper self-clean, lower not, upper electronic controls, lower knob controls) to both self-clean and both electronic controls. I’ve always been annoyed at the lack of self-cleaning in the bottom oven, and am tempted to go up one step.
Another 180 gets me a top convection oven.
I suspect a repair - if even possible (the thing was installed in 1995 or so) would cost 700 or so, and that is over half the cost of the low-end setup described above.
Tell me what to do! If I don’t go for convection, will I always wonder about “the one that got away”? (I don’t anticipate needing to replace the oven again any time soon…). I don’t bake a lot, but do run into unevenly cooked food when we are doing multiple dishes.
I only had a convection oven for a couple of years while I house-sat for an uncle during his overseas job. So it was about 14 years ago, and the oven (Viking) was probably 6 years old at the time. I hated it. If you’ve got some patience and don’t mind some really dried-out food/bakery items until you figure out how to adjust cooking times, I’d say go for it. It was too big an adjustment for me to bother with, though I might have done differently if I knew I would be stuck with it long-term. Or maybe they’re vastly different now than they were then. I hope so.
My “fix” for uneven oven is keeping a pizza stone on the bottom rack. I just put anything but glass right on top of it like it’s not there. It’s black these days.
I bought a new oven about a week ago. It’s convection. So far, its…well, still in a box in the garage. I have several friends who are serious cooks…some professional…and they all recommended the convection oven to me. I found that in the higher end consumer models, it was hard to NOT get convection.
ETA: I have a thread in Cafe Society from a month or two ago called something like “How awesome is your kitchen?”…discussing my kitchen remodel. There was some good advice in there about buying a new oven.
I use the convection mode in our oven when I need to bake things on two racks at the same time. You can bake two racks of cookies in a convection oven and both of them will turn out exactly as they should, instead of one rack being pale and mushy. It’s like magic!
It’s also good for when you need to heat something quickly.
Apart from that, I don’t actually use it all that much.
It’s a nice-to-have feature, not a deal maker/breaker IMHO.
Unless you use your oven a LOT or have a real need for it to warm up very quickly it wouldn’t be a major factor in a purchase decision for me.
I love my convection oven and miss it when I’m away from it. For most recipes I don’t need to adjust the time or temperature or anything. The only time I have to be careful is when I’m roasting meat. It roasts meat much faster. One Thanksgiving the little indicator popped up on the turkey saying it was done 2.5 hours into it’s cooking time. The math said 4 hours, so I ignored the “done” indicator and kept it in there for 4.
:smack: Whoops! :p. Note to self: try out the convection feature thoroughly before using it for any “high-stakes” meals!
We had a brief period yesterday where we thought we might be able to buy a used oven from the neighbors (they’d just upgraded to a new stainless model to make all their appliances match, prior to putting it on the market). 400 bucks; even paying someone to install it for us would have been a considerable savings.
And then we checked the measurements… despite having the EXACT SAME floorplan (mirror image of ours), their oven was 27 inches, while ours is 30. Oh well.
I think I’ll check out the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store today to see what they have, and if they don’t have something, I guess I’ll go to Sears and go for the whole shebang - might as well go for “broke”. Their double-oven, both levels self-cleaning (an upgrade from what we have), top convection, stainless front… it’s on sale for a pretty good price this week. I suppose I could spend even MORE and get double-convection (plus higher wattage) but I don’t think that’s worth it.
How does the convection feature hold up? Does it tend to break after a couple of years? Those extended warranties are pricy but would that be worth it for the convection feature?
We’ve had a GE Profile Performance double (convection top, traditional bottom) self-cleaning, stainless front for 12 years. We had to replace the control panel and the motherboard last year. Those are the only things that have ever given us trouble (knock wood. God, I hope I didn’t just jinx myself).We had to fix it all up when we tried to sell the house.
One of the reasons we took this house off the market and moved back in? My oven. I love my oven. But, FWIW, if I had to do it all over again, I’d get convection units for both. (The top unit is convection or traditional, you can choose whether you use it or not.) The bottom oven rarely gets used. Mostly because we just don’t need it, but sometimes when I’m baking cookies I like the convection effect so much that I just have the batches take turns in the convection oven and leave the bottom one off.
I will never, willingly, but a non-convection oven again.
Another unexpected benefit to convection is less energy use. Our LG auto-converts temps - what might be 350 in a regular oven will be converted down to 325 with convection. You’ll also find that things tend to cook faster. As convection ovens become more mainstream, I’m seeing convection-specific directions appearing on some frozen foods.
You do need to read the oven’s instructions and heed them WRT rack positioning and convection mode. Ours can do three racks (lots of cookies!) at one time, but you need to use specific rack positions and to set the three-rack mode, which is nothing more than pressing the “Convection Bake” button twice. Similarly, you need to pay attention with convection roasting, or the top of your roast beast will be burnt beast as that mode also fires up the upper broiler element.
Update: we got the new double oven installed earlier this week. Moon Unit made a cake in it the next day (not using the convection, AND not using the right size pan - whoops!). Cake came out fine, despite the guesswork as to when it was done.
There’s a dead chicken in the oven right now. I used the “autoconvert” feature (I think… if I did that wrong, it’s delivery pizza for us!), and set a timer for 1:20 (they normally take 1:45 or so). Threw some carrots and potatoes in the bottom of the pan as usual, also.
Oh - and by the time we made the decision to get a new one, we couldn’t even have power to the units AT ALL - after a few minutes, the incessant beeping would start. We’d have to stand there and push the “off” button every minute or two if we wanted to even use the cooktop (they were on the same circuit - this has been remedied). We did a lot of crock-pot cooking and takeout for a few weeks.
My GE convection oven has two convection modes. One, called “convection roast,” uses the fan to circulate the air while the oven operates at the set temperature. The other, called “convection bake,” uses the fan at a lower setting while lowering the temperature to compensate for the improved heat transfer caused by air movement. So, for example, if I use convection bake at a 350 degree setting, the actual temperature will be something like 320 degrees. The baking time ends up being the same as if I used a non-convection oven at 350 degrees. It has the advantages of lower energy cost and more even heating (which really helps when baking cookies).
The convection roast setting really does cook things more quickly. For example, I can roast an eighteen pound turkey to an internal temperature of 155 degrees in just a few hours. My oven has a temperature probe, which I can use to ensure that things don’t get overcooked.
Interesting - ours is a GE as well, and this would explain why the manual said that using the “auto convert” mode, it would display the real temp (e.g. if you want to bake at 350, it’ll auto-convert 325 or whatever, and will display 325 on the readout). But when I convection-roasted the chicken last night, it still said 450. The bird did cook faster - 1:20 vs. 1:45ish. The carrots I threw in the bottom of the pan were tasty, but didn’t get nearly the same level of near-burnt / yummy caramelization as they usually do. The roasting pan has high sides, which I’m sure contributed to that.
OMG, I have had my GE convection oven for 12 years and I didn’t know this. This explains why when I bake stuff I’ve never had to make any allowances for convection and why I’ve made jerky out of our roasts. THANK YOU