any hints for baking with convection oven?

[grasswire]

Yesterday was my pie-baking marathon, and it was my first go-round with a restaurant's convection oven. Hmmm.

We used Pyrex pie plates. I reduced the temperature of the oven by 25 percent and the time by 25 percent.

They were different from the usual pie results in a conventional oven. I could see through the Pyrex that bottom crusts browned nicely. But the top crusts looked dryer. And it took a long time for the fruit pies to produce juice.

I was worried about the custard pies -- would they bubble inside, or something weird? So I cut one finished pumpkin pie as a test, and it was lovely inside, although.....different. Maybe that was because I let the filling sit for almost an hour before pouring it into the shells.

So I'm wondering how the convection oven will do with cakes. Will they be more dry? Different somehow?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. I don't bake,

but everything I've done in my convection oven, using the same reductions as you stated, has come out really well. Mostly meat and poultry, and it's all been juicy and just great.

Give a cake the shot. I bet it works.

Good luck.................

[JPace]

2. I just bought an electric range with a convection oven

and don't care for it so far. I did pork tenderloin, a favorite of mine which came out nicely browned and juicy in a regular oven but is only lightly browned and rather tough and chewy in a convection oven. Same thing with cakes. I have started turning the convection off when I use the oven. Perhaps someone with more experience with convection cooking can tell if I am I doing something wrong here?
Thanks!

[eleny]

3. You need to cover the top of the pie with a round of foil

I had a range with a convection oven for many years. When baking pies, you make a round of aluminum foil to cover the top of the pie. It rests lightly on top for most of the baking and then it's removed near the end of baking so the top will brown up.

Edited to add: You do the same for pies that don't have a top crust, too, since there's usually a rim of crust. For those, I'd make the round of foil but cut out the center so it's more like a collar just covering the rim.