Friday, February 20, 2009

New Oven Review: Bosch 800 is great!

We've moved into our new place, and are now back online. This means I'm now a first-time owner of a pair of convection ovens, and I really really love them. Bosch 800 Series; here’s the link. They make me happy.

They work better than I could have imagined, and not just for bread. We use them at almost every meal, and My husband likes and uses them too, and we’ve used both at once a few times. He made beef jerky the other day (dehydrate mode), and a pork tenderloin roast last night.

The Bosch has three elements in each oven, making them "European Convection". The third element is in the back oven wall, around the convection fan. That works better than the "American Convection", which lacks the element that is around the fan. My parents have an "American" style JennAir, and it cooks so unevenly that they never use convection.

I'm very glad I chose the Bosch over the Trivection ovens from GE. The Trivection was tempting because it is supposed to cook things quickly, especially casseroles. It has a low-level microwave in it, but just the "American Convection". I haven't tried a Trivection, but the Bosch ovens are faster than my old oven, and faster than the microwave if you’re fixing something from the freezer for the whole family. Speed Convection; they really mean that.

The Electrolux Icon also looked nice, but will not hold a 16" pizza stone. The stone fits into the Bosch just fine. There's a proof mode, which works nicely. Breads cook faster and rise more. If you get one, be sure to read the instructions, look at the guides, try out the programmed recipes, and expect your food to be done faster than a conventional oven.


Updadte:
I still love these ovens, but there is one fault: the display gets confusing sometimes, when both ovens are on. On a few occasions, I've had an oven be off, and I couldn't tell until later. On others, when trying to heat the lower oven to 550 for pizza, I ended up setting the upper oven. This was especially bad because the upper was supposed to be proofing some dough. I had to throw part of it away, even though I figured out what I'd done fairly quickly. It works great when I get the correct oven doing the job I want.