Arthur Shapiro wrote:
>
> My more than 25-year-old GE toaster oven developed a problem (the shell became
> live, as my wife found out the hard way!) and I decided it had had a long and
> glorious life and didn't need to be repaired. It was replaced with a
> Cuisinart bake/convection bake/broil unit, which seems to be a fine product in
> the 10 days I've had it. I haven't used the main oven in that time - the
> Cuisinart has handled everything I needed.
>
> I don't yet understand when I want to use convection vs. regular baking, and
> the manual isn't much help. I've used convection for everything so far,
> reducing the temp by 25 degrees as seems to be the general rule of thumb. So
> far the only thing that didn't come out well was a package of crescent rolls -
> the bottoms were somewhat browner than the tops and some of the
> more-protruding portions of each roll browned more than the more-recessed
> portions. Everything else has been fine.
>
> Can anyone share some words of wisdom about choosing convection vs. normal?
> Thanks!
>
> Art

Convection in a full sized or commercial sized oven helps even out the
temperatures and reduce hot spots, something that is particularly
helpful when you have four sheet pans of cookies in the oven and don't
want to have to rotate them more than once during baking. On the scale
of a toaster oven, I'm not sure how much difference convection really
makes.