Your Convection Oven May Not Be the Best Choice for Baking
If you have an oven with a convection setting, meaning it has a fan that circulates hot air around the food, you might be tempted to use it for cakes, cookies and cookies so that the food cooks “more evenly”. However, according to Good Baked Things patron Stella Parks (aka The Brave Tart), this could lead to sub-optimal results.
In a tweet that turned out to be more controversial than it should have been, Parks explained that changing the cooking environment of the treat, which should have been cooked in a conventional oven, could lead to crusting faster than desired:
Convection should never be used in American baked goods unless a recipe requires it. In a home oven, hot dry air will speed up the crusting of cakes, cookies and biscuits, which usually does not give the desired boost.
These can be flatter cakes, biscuits that are too wide, or biscuits with less fluff. Given that baked goods are mostly chemistry you can eat, it makes sense that you would want to follow the instructions as a recipe maker unless you’re a professional baker who understands a convection oven and makes a whole bunch of baked goods every day. When I entered Parks’ personal correspondence, she made it clear that she was talking to home bakers.
“For a seasoned baker who makes adjustments knowledgeably, anything is possible,” she said, explaining that the tweet “is aimed at bakers who just switch to convection because they have a vague idea of what is best.” Professionals use it to compensate for the risks associated with baking in large quantities (for example, strong steam generation), and bakers simply do not face this risk at home. ” If you have no choice but to use a convection oven, covering the food can help combat excessively dry air, but Parks warns that it can “on the contrary affect browning and crusting.”
In short, the convection setting is a tool that can be used to achieve great results, but American recipes were developed with still air ovens in mind. If you are comfortable enough to adjust the time and temperature as needed, then of course do it, but I would trust Stella on this. Stella probably knows more than you do .