What is convection cooking?

In a convection oven, a fan circulates the heated air evenly, over and around the food. This circulating hot air is evenly distributed throughout the oven cavity. As a result, foods are evenly cooked and browned—often in less time with convection heat. Preheating is not necessary with foods having a bake time of over 15 minutes.

•Food is heated faster in a convection oven. When using the convection feature, many types of food can be cooked at lower temperatures than those suggested for regular ovens.

•Good for large quantities of baked foods.

•Good results with cookies, biscuits, brownies, cream puffs, sweet rolls, angel food cake and bread.

•Ideal for baked foods cooked on two or three shelves. Because heated air is circulated evenly throughout the oven, foods can be baked with excellent results on two or three shelves at a time. Multi-shelf baking may increase cook times slightly for some foods but the overall result is time saved. Multi-shelf baking provides very good results with cookies, biscuits and other quickbreads.

•Recipe books often give times and temperatures for cooking in regular ovens. Convection ovens make it possible to reduce the temperature by 25–50°F.

•Check foods for doneness at the minimum suggested cooking time.

•Some package instructions for frozen casseroles or main dishes have been developed using commercial convection ovens. For best results in this oven, preheat the oven and use the temperature on the package.