Commercial Convection Ovens for Baking Cookies
Didn't some companies used to make ovens that looked like deck ovens but were electric convection. I can however completely understand why a dedicated Pastry Chef or Baker like FP wouldn't be a fan of convection ovens. Mind you with the really expensive ovens (Rational) the fans stops, reverses direction, blows for 5 minutes, stops, reverses direction, etc. We do a lot of cookies in our convection ovens. I'm pretty sure Baxter makes a Hybrid convection as well as a mini rotating rack oven. It's great oven, but kind of like driving a Porsche to Home Despot, there's so many things the Rational is ideal for like catering, but it will bake a lot more even. I've had the best luck with Blodgett convection ovens with South Bend not far behind. All units used Double stack convection ovens. Vulcan, southbend and Blogett all are good convection ovens. For the volume the OP is doing I see no real draw back in a convection oven. Because our ovens were not dedicated for baking the biggest issue I found with uneven cooking was exactly like Chefedb noted up thread but more often bits of tinfoil would get sucked into the blower fan veins and it would disrupt the air flow. 1) Heat always rises, especially with gas ovens, as the heat box is always on the bottom. IIR they called them "true" convection or some thing along those lines and they had a heating element around the blower as well. But with the "regular" convections the fan always blows in one direction. Other bad point is stck convections are sometime to high for some people and to lift a heavy pan this high is a lot even for me and I am big. Convections because of the forced air concept dispurse the heat more evenly thus less hot spots. A deck oven will give a more even bake--not perfect, but better. It's not as apparent with stuff like buns or the thousands of other things that go into a convection. Combined with heat rising from the bottom (gas only, with electric, the heat coils are wrapped around the fan) you will get an uneven bake. There are a few hot spots in the ovens (typically around the edges), so we tend to avoid putting product there. What's the big thing with convection. This means one side of the oven will always be hotter.