1. Fan oven symbol
A fan in a circle represents an oven that uses a fan to distribute heat generated from a circular element that surrounds the fan. Ideally, the heat distribution should be even, so that it doesn’t matter where the food is placed in the oven, it cooks perfectly every time.
Fan ovens are designed to heat up faster, reduce cooking time and decrease energy consumption. Fan ovens are great for baking multiple trays at a time (biscuits, cupcakes and muffins on the top, middle and lower shelves respectively). They’re also recommended if you like your meat cooked the ‘chefy’ way, tender on the outside and rare on the inside.
If you have a combination oven and you want to use the fan, then the symbol won’t have a circle around the fan.
2. Conventional heating
The symbol for conventional heating is two lines, one at the top and one at the bottom of a square. The lines represent the two heating elements used, one at the top and one at bottom of the oven. Instead of a fan, the heat is diffused by natural convection. Use the conventional heating mode for roasting meat and vegetables or baking cakes.
3. Bottom element heat
The symbol is a single line at the bottom of a square, which represents the lower heating element in use. This method is ideal for baking something that requires a crispy base such as pizza. It is also used for baking a casserole.
4. Bottom element heating with grill
The symbol for this function is the zigzag (grill) line at the top and a straight line at the bottom of a square. It’s a good function to use for cooking pies, quiches, and crisping pizzas.
5. Fan with grill
The symbol is the zigzag line at the top of a square with the fan symbol underneath. The fan distributes the heat, while the grill roasts from the top. The grill cycles on and off to maintain the temperature setting. This method is ideal for cooking meat and poultry.
6. Grill
The symbol is simply a zigzag line at the top of a square. Using the full grill allows you to cook food for virtually your whole family plus guests. There may also be a half-grill setting, which means only the centre of the grill element gets hot. You’ll need to place food dead centre to get even cooking. Grills ate great for crisping and browning food, so use yours to make toast or toasted sandwiches, melt and brown cheese on lasagne and make delectable mushroom steaks.
7. Oven light
Rather obviously, the symbol is a light bulb in a square. Some ovens cook with the light on automatically so you can see progress easily, but other ovens have a light switch so that you have to turn it on and off to see what’s potting.
8. Oven defrosting
Not all ovens have a defrost function, but if yours does, you’ll see it on the symbol that looks like a snowflake above a drop of water. In this mode, the oven fan is switched on but no heat is generated. The air circulation defrosts the food. It’s great if you forgot to take food out to defrost overnight and you need to make a plan quickly.
9. Warming oven
The symbol is a dish with ‘steam’ lines rising above it. Use the function to keep food warm, without cooking it anymore. Food should stay moist and not dry out when using the warming function.
10. Plate warming
The symbol for this function is three dishes lined horizontally above one another. Dinner party etiquette dictates that you must serve plates warm. This setting keeps your plates safely warm without damaging the china.
https://www.surewise.com/appliance-insurance/articles/guide-oven-symbols-functions/
To clarify: forced-air (a/k/a "convection", a/k/a "fan bake") ovens rely on a fan to circulate the air in the oven. The fast-moving air substantially enhances the rate at which heat is transferred to the food. It is particularly good where you want the surface to brown, such as roasts and breads; it is not as good for more delicate items, such as custards and cakes, which can set too quickly or get dried out. For cookies, it depends on what effect you want, but many standard types do well in forced-air ovens because the fan helps ensure that the whole oven stays at a uniform temperature despite the presence of several trays. (Of course, the tray closest to the heating element will still cook faster than the one farthest away, so you will still have to swap them partway through.)
The general rule for using the fan is to set the oven temperature 25 degrees F (15 C) lower than what the recipe calls for using in a regular oven. Even then, don't go strictly by cooking time, as ovens vary; rather, be sure to check on your food regularly to see how fast it is cooking. You may need to cover your food to prevent over-browning, or perhaps adjust the oven temperature.
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/19435/fan-bake-vs-bake
Understanding Your Convection Oven
First of all, understand that "convection" is a setting on your oven, not the oven itself, and it's usually controlled by a switch or a button near the other controls. When it's on, you are baking with convection heat; when it's off, it's just a regular oven and bakes as usual.
What happens when that convection setting is on? Your oven heats as usual, but a fan and exhaust system are engaged. These respectively blow and pull hot air through the oven and around your food. This means that the air directly around your food maintains a very steady temperature, helping your food cook more quickly and evenly. The exhaust system also pulls moisture out of the oven, so food becomes more crisp and brown.
5 Tips for Baking with the Convection Setting
1. Lower the temperature by 25°F.
Because heating and cooking is so efficient in a convection oven, you usually don't need quite as high a temperature to get the same results. A good rule of thumb is to set the oven to about 25°F below the recommended temperature of your recipe.
2. Check food frequently toward the end of cooking.
Also thanks to all this efficiency, your foods will usually cook a little more quickly than usual. Check on your food halfway through the recommended cooking time to gauge how quickly cooking seems to be coming along, and then check more frequently near the end of cooking. Go by how your food looks and smells to tell when it's done, rather than by the timer. As you get used to baking with the convection setting, you'll get a better feel for how quickly certain things cook and can feel more confident predicting the timing.
3. Don't crowd the oven.
Because convection relies on air being able to circulate, be careful of overcrowding the oven and blocking the flow of air. The food will still cook, but the cooking will be less efficient and you'll lose the advantage of the convection setting. It's fine to bake on multiple racks, but try not to fill the racks wall-to-wall.
4. Use low-sided baking sheets and roasting pans.
The convection setting also works best if you use low-sided pans or rimless baking sheets, especially when baking cookies or roasting vegetables. This allows for better air circulation around the food and helps crispy foods become even crisper. (Although note that this is less important for things like casseroles and cakes, which rely on the high sides of their pans to hold their shape and where crisping isn't as important.)
5. Don't use convection for cooking cakes, quick breads, custards, or soufflés.
While these dishes would benefit from the steady heat, the movement of the air from the fan and exhaust system can cause them to cook unevenly or to rise less impressively. Custards can also form an unpleasant crust on the surface as they dry out in the wicking action of the oven.
https://www.thekitchn.com/5-important-things-to-know-about-baking-in-a-convection-oven-226272
Why Should You Use Convection?
It cooks faster: Because hot air is blowing directly onto food instead of just surrounding it, food cooks about 25 percent faster in a convection oven.
It cooks more evenly: Regular ovens can have hot spots, depending on where the heating element is, but the fan in a convection oven will circulate the air to help even out the temperature variances.
It's better at browning: Air in a regular oven can become a bit humid, as moisture can't escape. Convection creates a dry atmosphere that caramelizes the sugars faster when roasting, so foods like meats and vegetables get browner, but the interiors stay moist.
It saves energy: Because food cooks faster in a convection oven, and generally at a lower temperature, it's a bit more energy efficient than a regular oven.
When Should You Use the Convection Setting and When Should You Use the Regular Oven Setting?
Because there are so many benefits to convection, you're probably wondering why most convection ovens still have a regular oven setting. Depending on what you're making, there are instances when you actually don't want a fan circulating hot air around.
When to Use the Convection Setting
Any time you're roasting: Foods that are roasted, like meats and vegetables, really benefit from convection cooking. They cook faster, more evenly, and the drier environment yields crispy skin and caramelizes exteriors much better.
When baking pies and pastries: Convection heat melts fat and creates steam faster, which helps create more lift in pie doughs and pastries like croissants.
When making lots of cookies: Convection allows you to bake more than one tray of cookies at a time evenly without the need to rotate them partway through baking.
Any time you're making something that's cooked with a cover: If you're covering up the food with a lid, like a braise, or covering a casserole dish with foil, moisture loss is not an issue, so you might as well cook on convection since it'll cook faster.
When you're toasting or dehydrating: When you toast or dehydrate food, the goal is to remove moisture as quickly as possible, so convection is more efficient than regular.
When Not to Use the Convection Setting
The fan becomes a liability around delicate foods that start out as batter and set while cooking. Blowing air on these foods can create lopsided results. Don't use convection when making these foods:
Custards and flans
Souffles
Cakes
Quickbreads
Breads: While some argue that convection creates even browning and a great crust, others say that it dries out the interior of the bread. The choice here is really up to you.
How to Use the Convection Setting
If you've decided to use the convection setting, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Lower the temperature: Lower the recommended oven temperature by 25°F.
Check earlier: Because food cooks more quickly on convection, check on it two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through the recommended cooking time and make any necessary adjustments.
Make sure air can circulate: Convection is only effective if the air can circulate well over the food. Use trays, roasting pans, and baking pans with lower sides, and don't cover the oven shelves with foil.
https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-a-convection-oven-and-when-do-i-use-it-appliance-guides-from-the-kitchen-216549
The truth is, many of us have convection-capable ovens and simply don't use them to their full effect. The reason is simple: We're afraid of ruining our food, and haven't taken the time to learn how to cook with convection.
Since convection requires different cook times and temperatures, it can be confusing to figure out how to cook your tried-and-true recipes. It's not unlike the learning curve facing induction cooktop owners. The difference, of course, is that induction users have no choice but to learn; convection oven owners can simply use conventional cooking modes.
But like induction, convection is an almost indisputably superior cooking technology. After all, it can reduce cooking times and improve the overall quality of food. And thanks to new oven technologies like automatic convection conversion, which can adjust your conventional recipes for you, it's easier than ever to cook with convection.
The Science
Conventional ovens include two heating elements—one at the top, and one at the bottom of the oven chamber. Both are often used during preheating, but in most cooking situations ovens only use the lower heating element. (The top element is usually reserved for broiling.) This can lead to uneven heating; the center of the oven can be cooler than the top or bottom.
These hot and cold spots can produce uneven cooking. For example, a turkey that you roast for hours could be overcooked in some places and undercooked in others. Or a tray of chocolate chip cookies could come out half-burnt and half-blonde.
Convection ovens use a fan and an extra heating element to correct these flaws. Positioned at the back of the oven, the fan creates a stream of air that's passed over the third element and recirculated into the oven chamber, normalizing the temperature throughout.
"Just like [how] wind chill works, you kind of have a little bit more intensity of heat when it's moving around," said Chef Bruce Mattel, Associate Dean of Food Production at The Culinary Institute of America.
Mattel says using convection results in roasts that sear better, pastries that are lighter and flakier, and foods that caramelize to a more ideal golden brown.
"One of the reasons why you get better color is that, as food cooks, it emits moisture," said Mattel. "The fan helps wick away that moisture a little more rapidly than a conventional oven."
He added that the whole idea of cooking in an oven is to get rid of moisture. The great thing about convection is that the fan accelerates that process.
"True" Convection
Before we continue, I have to break some bad news: There's deception in the world of convection. If you already own a convection oven, you might want to make sure it's the real thing.
You see, there are two types of "convection" ovens on the market: "True" or "European" convection, and standard convection. True convection ovens have both a fan and a third heating element, while regular convection ovens only have a fan—no additional heating element is included.
"You can use the element at the back of the cavity to provide a good portion of the heat," said Sabrina Hannah, a food scientist at the GE Advanced Systems Group. "And then it's easier to distribute that heat evenly for two or three racks of food."
Regular convection ovens may not cook food as evenly as true convection ovens, since the fan blows around both hot and cold air. In other words, if you want to guarantee you get the most out of convection cooking, make sure you buy a convection oven with a third heating element.
Automatic Convection Conversion
If you're in the market for a convection oven but don't want to deal with the hassle of converting all your recipes, you're in luck. Virtually all convection ovens available today have a feature called automatic convection conversion. As the name suggests, these ovens will automatically convert the temperature and/or cook time from your conventional recipe to work with convection.
"It stems from this idea that consumers have been hesitant to use it because they don't want to have to change a recipe," said Hannah. "You don't want it to not work."
But if you already own a convection oven without automatic conversion, don't worry—you don't need to buy a new stove. Below, we'll explain how you can convert your recipes yourself.
Converting Recipes Yourself
There are no hard and fast rules for converting your recipes to convection, but we can still provide some general guidelines.
Better Homes & Gardens recommends either reducing the cook time by about one quarter or reducing the oven temperature by about 25 degrees. Chef Mattel adds that, in general, it's best to reduce oven temperature first, before adjusting cook time.
For recipes that need to be covered while cooking, the cook time and temperature should be the same. This makes sense, since the food inside a covered baking dish isn't exposed to the hot air being blown around by the convection fan.
It takes some trial and error to get the hang of convection, but if you use these simple tips, you should be able to avoid any culinary mishaps.
When Not to Use Convection
Convection can help just about anything cook faster and taste better, but there are still a couple cases where you shouldn't use it.
In particular, Chef Mattel says the fan can cause problems when you're cooking foods that are naturally light and airy. Take cream puffs, for example.
"You wouldn't want to use the fan because once the product leavens, it could actually blow off the pan," he said.
Mattel adds that the same thing can happen when cooking with parchment paper or tin foil; air can get under it and blow everything off your cookie sheet.
For her part, GE's Sabrina Hannah said she has never witnessed this particular issue with her company's ovens, but it's not outside the realm of possibility for convection ovens in general.
http://ovens.reviewed.com/features/convection-cooking-101-a-guide-to-cooking-baking-with-fans
In my opinion, convection ovens are only useful if the fan can be disabled. The fan makes it hotter, which is useful when you want to cook something faster. This works for cookies, biscuits, muffins, puff pastry, and other laminates, and small stuff. Larger items will brown on the outside, and look done, before they are done on the inside. This is terrible for large loaves of bread, pound cakes, white meringues, or anything that’s delicate, like custards.
Gas or electric is not an issue for me in terms of ovens, but I must have a gas stove, and the oven is attached, so that’s what I have.
If you can disable the fan, then go for it. Otherwise, stick with a conventional oven.
FYI, convection ovens were developed for restaurants to speed things along. The fan was supposed to circulate air so that things brown evenly. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Things still brown unevenly with the fan. It is always necessary to rotate pans throughout baking.
https://www.reluctantgourmet.com/convection-oven-or-conventional-oven-for-baking/
https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2015/02/15/convection-conundrum/
https://cheftalk.com/threads/baking-cakes-in-commercial-convection-ovens-yes-or-no.64439/
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/15545/fan-oven-or-no-fan-oven