Help! Unevenly cooked cake with convection oven
 

My bakery is trying to transition from a conventional oven to a gas
commercial convection oven.

Our cakes are all coming out overcooked on the outside with an undercooked
inside.

The ovens are used and have not been calibrated. We don't know if they are
working correctly. Cookies seem to come out fine using the ovens, but all
of our cakes have come out wrong.

We have been forced to use our conventional oven for now, but because of our
volume, it's very hard to do so.

Any hints would be appreciated.

Thanks.

"BakingHubby" > wrote in message
news:d6TOd.84004$Tf5.78809@lakeread03...
> My bakery is trying to transition from a conventional oven to a gas
> commercial convection oven.
>
> Our cakes are all coming out overcooked on the outside with an undercooked
> inside.
>
> The ovens are used and have not been calibrated. We don't know if they
are
> working correctly. Cookies seem to come out fine using the ovens, but all
> of our cakes have come out wrong.
>
> We have been forced to use our conventional oven for now, but because of
our
> volume, it's very hard to do so.
>
> Any hints would be appreciated.
>

Lower the temperature by 25F. It sounds like the oven is too hot.

Convection ovens are fine when it comes to roasting but they are
terrible when it comes to baking, especially anything that has to rise
such as a cake. They simply cause the crust to form too fast before
the batter has been given sufficient time to rise. You need to bake
everything 50 degrees cooler than what you would normally bake it at.
Even when you do that the results aren't as good as a regular oven.

Thanks for the advice. We are trying to cook 1/2 sheet cakes with the fan
speed on low. Should the fan speed by on high, perhaps, or would that make
the problem worse? Also, we have lowered the temperature quite a bit, and
we're up to about an hour cooking time.

> wrote in message
oups.com...
> Convection ovens are fine when it comes to roasting but they are
> terrible when it comes to baking, especially anything that has to rise
> such as a cake. They simply cause the crust to form too fast before
> the batter has been given sufficient time to rise. You need to bake
> everything 50 degrees cooler than what you would normally bake it at.
> Even when you do that the results aren't as good as a regular oven.
>

keep your fan speed on low and good luck. I also work with both types
of ovens, for genoise, I would never use a convection oven. If you are
baking something that is more forgiving, like a bundt cake, then you
can get away with a convection. But really, cakes are better done in a
conventional oven. I normally use my convection for breads, cookies,
pies, pastries, meringues. Other than those, it's a conventional oven.

Well, we finally cooked a good cake in our convection oven, but it took a
lot longer than we wanted.

The magic formula:

200 degrees, low fan speed, rotate once, cook for 1 hour and 30 minutes

It's really enlightening to me to hear all of the bakers that don't use
convection ovens for their cakes.


"Lore" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> keep your fan speed on low and good luck. I also work with both types
> of ovens, for genoise, I would never use a convection oven. If you are
> baking something that is more forgiving, like a bundt cake, then you
> can get away with a convection. But really, cakes are better done in a
> conventional oven. I normally use my convection for breads, cookies,
> pies, pastries, meringues. Other than those, it's a conventional oven.
>