[bakescakes]

I am planning on putting my "shop" in my basement. Is it better to bake cakes/pies in convection or conventional ovens. Thinking about making the purchase of a nice convection oven but don't want it to dry the cakes out. Any suggestions would be helpful.

[Jock]

I read somewhere the other day that when converting to a convection oven from a conventional one you should drop the temp by 25 degrees and reduce the bake time by 25%. Since ovens vary you need to do a couple of test runs to see how it reacts but otherwise, whatever you do in a conventional oven you can do in a convection oven.

Jock

[KyleW]

I guess it depends on what you mean by "shop". If you have tried and true recipes that you intend to offer for sale, I would stick with the one that brung ya I have a regular gas oven and a compact Cadco convection oven. It holds 3 half sheet pans, but they didn;t waste a lot of space.

Even with Jock's adjustments, I find that cookies don;t spread as well as they do in the regular oven. I also find that I don;t like the way breads bake in it. Regular pan loaves are OK, but anything beyond that doesn;t really do that well.
In the plus column for you is that quick breads and muffins seem to do very nicely. THey are the closest things to cakes I bake.

Just one man's opinion.

[bakescakes]

Kyle, I currrently bake cakes/pies out of my kitchen and will be moving to a new house in a couple of months. The kitchen is smaller than the one I use now, however, the house has a basement that I plan on using. I currently use electric but the new house has gas. I was planning on buying a small professional convection oven but it sounds as though according to what you said it may not be such a great idea. Maybe I should stick with a couple regular gas ovens. I have just heard that convections tend to dry things out and was wondering what it would do to my cakes. I supply my "goods" to catering companies and businesses in the community.
Thanks for the input!

[Jock]

They usually come with an on/off switch for the fan. So howabout you get the convection oven and use the fan where it works best and switch it off when you want a conventional oven?

Jock

[bakescakes]

Good idea, Thanks!