Convection Oven Advice

[nick]

I opened a cafe about ten weeks ago, and thought that by now I would be using my convection oven. With what little time I have had, I have tried to make cookies, but can not find a consistent temperature and time that results in a consistent cookie.

Are there any convection oven vets out there who have found any tricks?

By the way this is my first post. I have enjoyed this forum for some time, but never got around to posting any of my ten million questions.

 

[John P]

It could depend on your particular oven... see what the manufacturer says, and use that as a guideline.

As a general rule for all my convection cooking, whether at home, or in the store, I follow the recipe and subtract 30% on the time. The only time I found this doesn't apply are on certain large meat items such as a ham. But for cookies... it's as easy as pie.

 

[lizzy]

are you kind of experienced with baking? inconsistency can come from more than just the oven. I would buy an oven thermometer to check if the thermostat is accurate. Then make sure the oven is at the temperature the recipe calls for the cookies to be baked at.

don't open the door a lot, and use a timer. set it for a little less time than for a normal oven, and check it at that time.

I use an old subway convection oven to bake everything, no problems at all. I've converted all our recipes for the oven by trial and error, and have written down the temps and times in our own cookbook.

 

[nemoscoffee]

If you use Otis Spunkmeyer product, they will give you a free convection oven. We joked around and called it our easy bake oven, except it had two light bulbs instead of one.

It worked for us for about 4 months. We made cookies in it, per their instructions and they came out great every time. We also baked scones, croissants, etc in it and just had to figure out the time by trial and error.

We got profitible pretty quickly and spent $850 on a decent convection oven and got rid of the Otis S one. We had to experiment with times and temp settings to see what works best for different products. Just keep notes, let the oven warm up for 15 or 20 minutes until a steady temp is reached, don't open and close the door, use the same pans every time (don't buy a hodge podge of pans... use the same ones all the time, same thickness, same size, etc), use a timer. You will figure out what works best.

Good luck,
JD