I am considering to buy a new built-in electric oven for my kitchen because the old one does not have top or bottom heat (believe it or not). I regularly bake heavy rye bread (e.g., of the Danish kind), but would also like to bake other kinds of bread, both sourdough and yeast variants. For this purpose, which features and functions should I be looking for in a new oven?
- Just top and bottom heat, or anything else?
- I have seen steam functions in some brands (e.g., AEG), which I guess would come in handy (?).
- Are special bread baking settings (e.g., NEFF) useful?
- Is a proofing function useful, or is leaving on the light just as effective?
- Would a food sensor/oven thermometer be useful? Some ovens come with one that you can stick into meat (I guess probably also bread…), and it displays the temperature on the outside or stops when done. Good or bad for bread?
- People have recommended getting telescopic rails (e.g., Bosch and other brands). Are they still worth it if the oven is below the worktop?
- Anything else I should look out for with a view to baking bread? Or is a basic model with just top and bottom heat useful enough for all kinds of bread?
Best Answer
Probably also not a complete answer (can there ever be for such questions?), but the main criteria for me with a focus on bread would be (in no particular order):
For bread, 250°C is usually good, but speaking from experience, the step from bread to pizza is small and for those, the hotter the better.
I bake my bread either on a stone (2.5 cm thick, rectangular, almost as large as a baking sheet, not the flimsy round ones sometimes sold as pizza stone) or in a rather large Dutch oven. Especially the stone is heavy and I still pull out the rack halfway for some breads, because it’s easier to maneuver them. That’s a serious bit of load.
Yes, people make good bread in fan ovens, but I have also had issues with hot air blowing onto one side (remember that turning a half-baked bread is not a good idea, as opposed to some cakes), and the fan can also prematurely “blow away” the very important steam. If you can set top and bottom heat separately, it’s nice, but not that important.
Apart from the specific use case, there’s one feature that I miss a lot at the oven I am using at the moment:
A few thoughts about the various extras:
Unless you already know what you are going to use the specific features for, I wouldn’t pay extra for them, as there’s a good chance that you won’t be using them. If the oven you selected for its basic features anyway comes with some of them, fine. If your budget is large enough and you just want them for a reason (even “just because”), that’s of course another case.
And remember that the more features you have, the more can fail - a separate meat thermometer can be exchanged cheaply (or you can use multiple ones or one that connects to an app, or...), a built-in one would need either a costly repair or you would switch to a separate one in that case. Just for example.
I struggle to see how “special programs” for bread would cover the many cases of bread - your Scandinavian rye needs a totally different baking temperature gradient and time as, for example, a fougasse. But I admit I haven’t explicitly researched the feature.