Buying a Double Oven - Is Convection Worth it?

saw50st8

Thu, Apr 14 2011, 8:01 am

We are buying a new double oven in the near future.

Do you like your convection? Do you use it? Does it make *that* much of a difference?

I don't bake a ton, but I do like to make challah sometimes and I don't want the bottom to burn.

(Let's pretend money is of no object - the difference is about $2500 between the two models I'm looking at)

bells

Thu, Apr 14 2011, 8:41 am

Try to see if you can buy a double oven that has one convection one w/o. That model is cheaper usually and you have both ovens in 1!
Challahs I usually bake in the non-convection oven and it comes out picture perfect! The non-convection is much bigger too!

farm

Thu, Apr 14 2011, 8:41 am

I davka don't use the convection for baking, I made it fleishig and use the conventional oven on bottom for my baking. I find the convection baking is pretty different and takes a lot of getting used to in terms of baking times and temperatures for liquid batters, thick doughs, cookies, etc. It also changes everytime you use a different type of cookie sheet or pan or Pyrex. I know how my baking comes out in the conventional oven and wasn't willing to relearn. It took a little bit of adjusting to figure out how to make my shabbos chicken and potato kugel come out good in the convection but now I'm really happy with it. I only bought the convection because the house already had an oven so I needed a second one but didn't want to use up space with a second full oven and didn't want to pay for a double wall oven when we already had 1 perfectly good one (plus I'm not sure that they sell those anymore without at least one of them being convection). We got a convection that installs on top of the conventional oven with vents on the bottom. BTW, the appliance store in Lakewood has the best prices by far and it is worth paying delivery- still comes out cheaper than other appliance stores. They are also a pleasure to deal with.

saw50st8

Thu, Apr 14 2011, 8:49 am

farm,

we are using town appliance :-) I love them! We priced them against AJ Madison and Yudins (both have reputations as great and cheap) but they beat both prices and the salesman is awesome and answers my 100s of questions LOL.

OOTBubby

Thu, Apr 14 2011, 9:32 am

I have a built in double oven where only the top is convection. I love it and use it all the time. I only regret that I didn't get both ovens with convection -- it was available but there was a big price difference.

farm

Thu, Apr 14 2011, 12:24 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

Right! Town! I just couldn't remember the name...

life'sgreat

Fri, Apr 15 2011, 6:21 am

I only read the OP, but no, I don't think it's worth it. I paid extra to get convection and I really didn't see a difference in my challos with or without convection. After that I did research and it seems that in Israel, convection is important (if you get the typical brand oven they sell there) while here it doesn't make much of a difference.

momomany

Fri, Apr 15 2011, 4:15 pm

I got my ge electric double oven at town. the top oven is convection. I can only use the bottom oven as shabbos mode, because the convection has a fan that goes on and off even in shabbos mode. if you want to use your convection oven on shabbos - ask you lor before buying.

Chana Miriam S

Fri, Apr 15 2011, 4:45 pm

I always cook on convection now, except for chag mode. never burned bottoms and raw tops, crispy roasting and faster too. I have an oven drawer that is not convection on the bottom (not a heating drawer) and rarely use it unless it is a chag (once we had a power outage on a chag and the shabbat mode stayed off but the drawer and the burners turned back on when the power did.

eshmelky

Sat, Apr 16 2011, 11:57 pm

I have a convection toaster oven (called turbo oven in Israel) but its bigger than most ovens so I use it as my main oven (its really huge) and it works great! first of all you don't need to preheat, the cooking is much quicker and I love that it works with a timer so that I don't have to come back and turn off the oven when I think the food is done, it just turns off by itself. The problem for me right now is that you can't kasher it for pesach becasue there is no self-clean and the fan would need to be taken apart which is basically impossible. I don't know if you are referring to a completely different sort of oven but thats my experience with it!

Tova

Sun, Apr 17 2011, 5:10 am

sarahd wrote:

I like my convection oven, but not enough that I would spend an extra $2500 on one (or two, for that matter.)

Ditto to this. And yes, I used Towne Appliance and they were great- beat all the prices (even with delivery), threw in a free warranty even because they couldn't get the oven on the Tues truck only the Thurs one (they deliver to my city twice a week) -we were putting in a new kitchen so it actually DID make a difference between having an oven to cook with and not.