Fan oven

mikeywills

Electric ovens give you far more scope than a gas equivalent.

We have a Neff, which has top and bottom element for baking,
Grill and twin grill,
Fan cooking, for most cooking saves about 15 degrees from Gas, and time.
Fan and bottom element, no need to blind bake ever, cook base and ingredients together crispy bases every time.
Bottom heat only, for bain marie cooking though have never used this,
Dough proving, and separate bread making facility
hydroclean, which steam cleans the oven so I only have to wipe it over.

I absolutely love my oven, and wouldn't be without it.

Have seen cookers that fit on the worktop, just like a microwave. These do not give you much internal space though.

Addiscomber

mikeywills, I am taking note of what you say about your Neff as we ordered one on Monday, although I don't think ours has hydroclean, but catalytic whatsits.

I have seen the tabletop ones, but I think the OP has a family so would struggle with one of those.

vivaladiva

I have a Belling oven - it's my second - having barely survived some seriously rubbish ones in between. Mine is the built in synergie one with 2 equal sized ovens. If we move house its coming with me.:D
BTW I bought it as a graded one off Ebay and it only cost £225!

FZwanab

My gas oven works fine if I am only cooking one thing, however if I need to use the 2 shelves in the oven, the items on the bottom shelf don't cook properly. Also today for example I was making cookies from the more for less cook book and it said bake for 10-15 mins, they were only cooked after 25mins and as I had made about 3 trays of them and couldn't cook them at the same time it took almost 1hr and 15mins to cook them all separately! I have spare counter space in my washroom and was considering putting a fan oven on the counter in there, as both the grill and hob of my gas oven work fine, I don't need to replace them. Thanks for all your help on this so far, its much appreciated.

saving-grace

In my previous house I had a Belling and was very happy with it.
I now have a Neff and it is excellent, sounds very like Mikeywills' one. (Addiscomber, I think the catalytic liners are a better option than the hydroclean.)
I understand that Neff and Bosch ovens are the same, its just the external design that is different (and Bosch are a bit cheaper)

jackieb

I have a Hotpoint with a fan oven - great cooker. Yes, you just have to tuck in the tin foil - otherwise it will blow off. (hehe, I said blow off )

The fan blows for a good while after you switch it off. It makes the kitchen very warm when you're cooking. The fan even goes on when I put the grill or top oven on and stays on until it's cooled down a bit (and the top oven isn't the fan oven. )

Addiscomber

saving-grace wrote:

(Addiscomber, I think the catalytic liners are a better option than the hydroclean.)
I understand that Neff and Bosch ovens are the same, (and Bosch are a bit cheaper)

You are the second person to tell me that about hydroclean - so pleased that I didn't choose the one with it. I have never had an oven which helped clean itself before so am rather excited - sad at 55 I know :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

The salesman told us that Neff and Bosch are virtually identical, but Bosch were more expensive there . Despite the profusion of names there are actually only about 3 groups of manufacturers now. Electrolux own loads of the traditional names like Parkinson Cowan, Tricity, Zanussi and AEG

FZwanab

My gas oven is a parkinson cowen double oven, has anyone else had a problem like me with it?

fudgem

FZwanab wrote:

My gas oven is a parkinson cowen double oven, has anyone else had a problem like me with it?

It's 20+ years since I've had a gas oven, but I remember having to shift trays about when I was batch baking, switch them over about half way through the cooking time and I think you'll find it works better.

The fan oven was, I think, invented to solve this problem, the fan moves the heat evenly round the oven, and it does work. Also, I find the electric oven much easier to keep clean than the gas oven. I still have a gas hob though because I like the controllability of gas under my pans.

If I were you, I think I would take professional advice about having the oven on a worktop, they should be able to tell you at any place they sell them whether or not this is safe, although if you don't mind the look of it, I can't really see any problem

mikeywills

Addiscomber wrote:

You are the second person to tell me that about hydroclean - so pleased that I didn't choose the one with it. I have never had an oven which helped clean itself before so am rather excited - sad at 55 I know :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

The salesman told us that Neff and Bosch are virtually identical, but Bosch were more expensive there . Despite the profusion of names there are actually only about 3 groups of manufacturers now. Electrolux own loads of the traditional names like Parkinson Cowan, Tricity, Zanussi and AEG

We went for hydroclean because it saved the need to clean the parts in the oven which were not catalytic lined. Normally the base, sometimes the roof and especially the shelves and rails.

With the hydroclean, you poor approx 1/2 pint of water with a little detergent into the bottom of the oven which is dished to take the water. The heat is generated from the base and it softens the greasy deposits from all necessary parts to allow me to wipe clean with ease. The catalytic liners work well on the parts that they cover.
We have also had a pyrolytic oven in the past which used to send the heat upto 500 degrees and burn of deposits. Unfortunately we left the shelves and rails in aswell and burned all the chrome off them to boot, this method of cleaning is very smelly and we always had the extractor fan blowing full with a door open just to get rid of the smells.