Hi all, does anyone have any knowledge or experience of baking bread in a convection microwave oven? The convection aspect can apparently be heated up to 450F. I have to buy a new microwave, and the only reason I would go in this direction is if I can be sure that my bread will cook ok in it.
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Hello Cielkaye,
If you do a search there are any number of discussions about this topic. Some seem to say you can, others don't seem to have much success. You have to use it on convection only and 450F (220C) is probably enough on the temperature front. The size of loaf you can bake might be limited too unless they are significantly larger than a conventional microwave.
Keep on bakin'
Farinam
I have a Convection Micro oven Bosch 653B, when I first started making sourdough bread I used that oven instead of my conventional fan assisted. I thought because it had a quick fire up to reach the required temperature it would be more economical.
The breads baked fine however they never got that great dark brown crunchy crust.
I was spraying the oven with water and placing trays at bottom to steam and I think this was the downfall of my oven as it died on me whilst baking a loaf
, well that and the abundance of flour getting into the oven when moving bread from peel to oven. I think the flour/water/ steam combination compromised all the electronics that those ovens need to operate . Fortunately I was still under guarantee so was able to blag my way to a brand new oven
, the error code that came up on the oven when it broke was a total mystery to Bosch, the engineer had never seen that error code and it wasn't on their fault list.
With regards to getting the perfect loaf from this oven there might have been lack of knowledge on my part as I used to only bake on the convection setting there are numerous other settings where you can use the grill/fan/micro etc , this might have given a better loaf...................operator error there maybe.
In short my conventional fan assisted oven bakes a far superior loaf. I would not recommend the convection for baking bread.
regards
Linda
Hi Linda
Thank you for your input. I currently bake in a fan forced electric oven with great results. I preheat a cast iron casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes in this with the lid on then 15 minutes with the old off. Do you think this would work in the convection microwave, preheating the casserole for 30 minutes first?
Regards
Christine
Hi Christine,
Glad I was able to help a wee bit.
Now to confuse you more. 
I think using a cast iron pot would help a bit, if I recall I once used my Romertopf clay baking dish in the convection oven (massive monster of a thing) to bake one loaf covered and it did improve the crust of the loaf, but once again not to the degree you get with a conventional oven. The romertopf is so big and cumbersome that i don't even use it in my fan oven,I prefer to bake 3-4 loaves at a time instead of one in a covered dish, just for the economics .
Personally I think the the convection/micro ovens just don't seem to have the same heat force, even although the oven settings go up to 250 degrees Celsius, i feel the intensity is just not there. I feel the same when cooking other foods in the convection oven, I will always cook a little bit longer just to be sure.
What I will point out here is I never pre-heated the convection oven for more than it took to get to the max temp. Which was only about 5-7 mins for 250 convection oven where my fan oven takes about 25 mins to get to max 240. So logically maybe the heat force is more powerful in conventional fan oven due to longer heating up time. I think I need to stop using women logic here it will just confuse the issue.
Are there any engineers out there that could help with a perfect explanation.
In short if you want to buy a convection/micro just for your bread , I don't think it worth it. If you want to buy it for general use then try it. regards Linda
http://www.livestrong.com/article/457540-how-to-bake-breads-in-convection-ovens/
Thought you might want to read this
Thanks lenohbabe.
Christine