Traditionally, ovens are used to bake, roast, or broil. Yet now they can help you proof your dough, steam, dehydrate fruits, rotisserie grill, brown, and even recreate that brick-oven taste in your pizza. In addition, convection cooking in many ovens today provides an even richer utility. With the myriad options in design available, the rule of “Form Follows Function” is even more true when deciding on an oven that not only cooks good, but looks even better. In this article, chefs from PartiesThatCook tested several brands of convection ovens for both form and functionality, and threw in a third equation—how the food tasted! The bake-off begins.

While they are relatively new, convection ovens are becoming quite conventional. If you are spending more than $1,000 on your oven, chances are that it will likely come with a convection option. Chefs prefer convection ovens over traditional thermal or radiant oven because the food cooks faster and more evenly. With a fan that circulates the air through the oven cavity, roasts are juicier, skins are crispier, breads rise higher, and cookies come out perfect. True convection, also known as European convection or third convection, means that there is an extra heating element near the fan that heats the air to the desired temperature before blowing it to the oven cavity for yet more efficient and even heating. We got cooking on the following five popular brands of convection ovens ranging from about $2,500 to $5,500 respectively: the GE Profile ZEK958, the Electrolux Designer Series E30EW85ESS, the Miele Masterchef H4890BP2, the Wolf DO30FSS, and the DACOR Epicure EO230. All are electric powered, true convection, double wall ovens with convection and self-cleaning functions in both ovens.

Where’s the Beef?

Not all ovens are created equal. All five ovens provided the basic convection bake and convection roast functions. The Miele oven, for example, has 17 different operating modes, the Wolf oven offers 8 modes and the Dacor offers 12. The Electrolux and GE ovens offer the basic modes aside from conventional broil, bake and clean. Quite frankly, if you are the occasional chef, these 5 basic modes should meet your needs.
We proceeded to test only those functions that are common to all five. We convection baked some just-in-season new baby potatoes with rosemary and sea salt. And because the GE and Electrolux did not offer convection broil, we used the conventional broil mode to cook some pimenton-rubbed skirt steaks. Quantities tested were the same for each oven, and we used the exact same recipes.
We were pleasantly surprised with the results. The Dacor scored well in both the starch and meat categories. The Dacor potatoes were evenly golden brown, crisp on the outside and moist and flavorful on the inside. The potatoes from the Wolf and Miele ovens were slightly less flavorful and their skins were not as crisp and evenly brown as the Dacor potatoes. The potatoes from the GE oven were slightly mealy and the Electrolux potatoes were just a bit undercooked under the same cooking time and heat.
The Dacor oven performed just as well with the pimenton-rubbed steak—
It was succulent and juicy. It had a caramelized glazing, lending a nice barbeque-like taste to it, and clearly distinguished itself from the rest of the pack. The Wolf, Miele and Electrolux ovens provided excellent results in the steak.

The Proof is in the Pudding

Or rather, a budino, which is Italian for pudding. To test how well the ovens performed at baking, we convection baked a Raspberry and Scharffen Berger bittersweet budino, which is really like a flourless bittersweet chocolate cake. The budino that came out from the Dacor oven had a crisp crust, held its shape the best, and yet was heavenly creamy inside. The budino from the Wolf oven was slightly undercooked inside despite the same cooking time. We needed to add more cooking time when using the Miele oven to prevent the budino from collapsing. The budino from the GE oven came out a bit lopsided, which we concluded was due to the uneven heating.
To make the budino, we required a low temperature of 275°F. Therefore, we weren’t able to test the Electrolux oven as the minimum temperature it offered for convection baking was 300°F. It is true that most recipes require a temperature of 350°F, yet you may want an oven that has a wider range of temperatures, especially if you make your own foie gras terrine. And if you want to multi-task your oven as a warming drawer, choose an oven like the Miele oven that goes down to 170°F, making it perfect for warming foods so that your entire meal will hit the table hot.

One feature that caught our eye was the Miele oven’s unique AutoRoast feature, which is excellent when cooking poultry. The oven sears the meat by initially heating to a very high temperature to brown, and then returns to the desired temperature and cooks until done. This mode increases flavor while reduces cooking and clean-up times. The Wolf, Miele and Dacor ovens also provided additional Convection Broil, which can achieve the same effect as the Auto Roast when used in conjunction with a convection roast. The Dacor and Miele ovens offer a Sear mode and a Surround mode that will also help to brown and intensely cook your food.
All the ovens except for the Electrolux model provided automatic temperature probes. You merely insert one end of the probe into the meat and connect the other end to the oven. When the meat reaches the correct desired temperature, the oven beeps and turns off. Miele takes this feature one step further by calculating and displaying the remaining time needed for an item to cook. The Dacor and Miele ovens also offer an optional rotisserie grill.
The Miele and Dacor ovens have a Dehydrate mode, which is good for making dried fruits and fruit leathers. To make pizza dough, a Dough Proofing mode is handy to accelerate the dough rising and halve the time needed to proof a dough. The Miele, GE, and Dacor ovens offer the Dough Proofing mode. To finish off a pizza, the Wolf, Miele and Dacor ovens offer a Stone Baking mode to recreate that rustic pizza crust. The bake stone itself, however, is considered an optional accessory. All of the ovens except the Electrolux oven provided a Defrost mode.
We also tested the time for the ovens to heat up from room temperature to 400°F. The Miele oven took 9 minutes to reach 400°F. The Wolf and the Dacor ovens took about 9 ½ minutes and the GE and the Electrolux took about 14 minutes. Of course, the amount of energy and power that each of these ovens consume differs, and may explain for the differences in pre-heating time.
Here’s a tip: calibrating an oven for correct temperatures is always a good habit. The temperature in the oven is usually pre-set at the factory and may change based on the oven’s final place of installation. In the past, we simply place an oven thermometer and do the math in our heads. With the modern ovens, the computing power in the oven can help you adjust the oven temperature. The Electrolux oven provides a manual adjustment: you can increase and decrease the temperature so that the control pad will show the true temperature. The Miele oven can detect temperature changes and automatic adjusts the oven temperature accordingly.
The Miele and Dacor ovens allow you to truly take charge of temperature management. You can pre-program the most frequently used temperature for each of the cooking modes.
Lastly, the GE, Miele and Dacor ovens offer a clever Sabbath mode where you can pre-program the oven to turn on without your intervention during Sabbaths.

We didn’t read any of the oven’s user manuals to get started, and we were able to operate all five ovens relatively easily. Since so much of the oven’s functions rest on its computing brains, the usability of the oven’s control panel has become a crucial decision making criterion. Miele’s control pad ranks the best in usability: its straight-forward, intuitive and logical menu system makes navigating the control pad a breeze. While the Dacor oven provides a shortcut menu for popular cooking modes, we were a bit confused.
The Electrolux, Wolf and GE oven control panels were relatively straight forward and intuitive to use; perhaps due to the much smaller selection of modes that these three ovens offer. For each of these brands, there is a trade off between having separate input pads for each oven, or a common input pad. The GE oven has an input pad for each oven and a shared read-out screen. It’s easy to operate. The Wolf oven is the inversed—there are two screens and one shared input pad. We found the Wolf oven not as intuitive to use as the GE—interacting on the same pad for different output screens was slightly confusing. The Electrolux oven had an elegant toggle approach using the same set of pad and screen.
With the Dacor, Miele, and Electrolux ovens, the control panels only light up on demand, making the oven façade sleek and clean looking the rest of the time. The Electrolux oven also had a special Wave Touch technology, which makes the control panel light up when you wave your hand over it—like motion sensitive lights. When the oven is off, its control pad is totally invisible and free of any label and markings, making the Electrolux the cleanest looking of the lot. Its lit buttons are of a piercing sapphire blue, and the labels are large, making it easy to read, unlike the Dacor oven, which also makes up for the tiny font size by having several personalization features. For instance, it offers you a choice of colors for the control pad lighting, and 5 different ringtones for different alarms settings. The Miele oven also has more than 2 alarms and personalized ringtones. The Miele, GE, and Dacor ovens also allow you to store favorite recipes.
In all five ovens, the temperature conversion between F and C are standard, which is wonderful for those who are metric system challenged as recipes get more internationalized from the various food blogs around the world. The Dacor and Miele ovens also offered a multi-language option to put you in the right cuisine mood. The digital controls also mean that temperature control is also very precise—down to the 5ºF increments. The Miele, Wolf and Electrolux ovens give the seconds in cooking time setting, which is a reassuring feedback to tell the user that the timer is ticking.

The Design Show

All of these premium ovens came in a brushed stainless steel frame, with smoke glass windows. In addition to stainless steel, the GE oven offers black or white frame finish options, and the Wolf oven has a platinum and carbon stainless steel finish. Ultimately, the choice of design really depends on the style of your kitchen.
All the ovens had cool-touch doors, although the Electrolux oven’s cool-touch door performed the best. It was difficult to know if the oven was on, as we could hardly feel any heat on the window. All of the ovens came with internal halogen lights.
We also looked inside the each oven to see how well it is laid-out. We believe the internal lay-out matters for two reasons—the oven capacity as well as how easy it was to clean the oven. All of the ovens came with self-clean options, so cleaning wasn’t difficult. The Dacor oven had hidden heating elements, while the Wolf, Miele and GE ovens had hidden bottom heating elements, which not only makes it easy to clean spills, but also allowed us to use the floor of the oven when using the convection bake mode. If you will bake several trays of cookies at once, the extra tier significantly increases the oven capacity. In addition, the Dacor oven provides a Pure Convection technology that filters the hot air inside the oven so that there is no transfer of flavor and aroma from one food to the other if you are cooking multiple dishes at once. All of the ovens except for the GE oven had 6 racks positions (the GE oven had 5). The Electrolux oven’s integrated ball bearing rack-gliding system had the smoothest gliding performance.

We were impressed with all the ovens and were pleasantly surprised at the differentiations each oven brand offers. The purchase choice depends on whether you are looking for design or performance, the types of cooking you will be do, and of course, how much you want to spend.
The GE oven is a great value oven. The Electrolux oven wins the design aesthetic award—it’s the best looking oven with truly thoughtful forms. The Wolf oven is a rock solid oven, and appeared to have the most amount of technology incorporated in the cooking parts. The Miele oven offers a large variety of features and is intuitive to use. The Dacor oven’s food performance is unsurpassed, and is the right oven for you if you have a very critical and discriminatory culinary palate.
Given the amount of convection cooking we do at PartiesThatCook, and that we are always using ovens in rented kitchens or in our clients’ homes and offices, we recommend the Miele oven because it is intuitive to use, and the variety of features it provides meets our vast cooking needs. It’s also moderately priced given the amount of functions it has. The Miele oven truly optimized all three aspects of the Form + Function + Food equation.

We would like to thank BSC Culinary Resource and Sierra Select Distributors in San Francisco, California for generously hosting our chefs for the tests.