Hello,
I will keep this as short as possible. My old oven needs to be thrown in the bin and I need a new oven.
I want to bake artisan type sourdough bread, those nice crunchy Italian style sourdough loaves that some bakeries produce, with that golden/brown crust with a soft springy inside.
I been doing as much reading as I can but all the blogs I manage to find don’t seem to come from actual people baking but sales pitches and random copy/paste information (just seems like a marketing thing not honest, first hand experience information).
I am trying to decide whether to buy a fan forced convection oven or a regular conventional oven.
I have seen some bakers over in the UK that only have a fan-forced oven (no option to turn the fan off) and claim they wouldn’t be interested in buying one without a fan either. The fan-forced oven (true convection oven that has a heating element behind the fan) is supposed to heat the oven up evenly on all shelves. So if you cook 1 thing or multiple things, it doesn’t matter where you put your stuff it will cook nice and even.
The other style is a conventional oven with a fan or also known as fan-assisted oven not true convection as the above. Essentially it is an oven that has a heating element on top and bottom of the oven with a fan behind to blow the heat the elements in the oven produce unlike the true-convection oven which has a heating element behind the fan itself. With this option however, the fan can be turned off and you can cook with just the top element, bottom element, both elements, you can cook with top element + fan, bottom element + fan, both elements + fan, etc.
So my concern due to lack of experience is what type of oven would give the best results in principle for bread?
They say that the true-convection (fan on with heating element behind fan) will heat the oven cavity up the most even, it will make the bread rise the fastest etc. To keep moisture in the oven they insert a roasting tray on the floor of the oven and put 3-5cm of boiled water in it, close the door and let the bread bake with all that steam inside which allows the bread to rise, get that crunchy like crust etc. You get the benefit of using less energy (temperature) due to turning the heat down, it cooks more evenly around the oven, can be awesome for roasted vegetables/potatoes and the like and just seems ideal. To eliminate the dry air problem you add the steam inside the oven and now you have the even heating + moisture + the ability to cook more than one thing on multiple shelves evenly and it seems to be the ideal oven that can do it all.
However - other readings suggest that even though the airflow creates an even heat environment that the fan blowing from behind is blowing the steam away from the bread so you end up with the very middle part where the fan is blowing onto the bread end up hardening before the rest of the bread that still has steam on it, this causes the bread to end up curled, have weird shapes and other problems.
So… whats the story? Is this a problem with the regular ovens that have a convection feature, (heating element top bottom and fan behind) or is this the problem even with a true-convection that has a heating element behind the fan? (or a 3rd heating element - however its described in the country)?
Just trying to work out what sort of oven to buy. Everyone says get used to the oven you have, they can all do stuff… sure, but I don’t have an oven, so I may as well just buy the right thing to get used to rather than something that is not suitable ideally. Short of the wood fire ovens artisan bakers prize… whats my next best option…
1: True convection with heating element behind fan - this oven I looked at has 3 settings only. Fan (with heating element behind it), Fan and top element/grill, or top element/grill with no fan.
2: Conventional oven with top and bottom elements with a fan behind that just blows heat around the elements in oven generate.
3: Conventional oven with no fan (if fan is bad for bread baking).
Thanks