French Door Ovens Are Back

[lordkenmore]

>I can't seem to get a grasp on this new trend of having commercial style appliances in the home, I can cook anything I will ever need on electric coil elements and a conventional oven.

And the amusing part: many people who buy this sort of thing are buying it for image, and never actually cook anything.

Truth be told, I don't understand the "commericial grade" either, although in my case one thing that "helps" me is that I have read enough to know that it's not a good idea for the home kitchen. But...I can imagine some people thinking: "This is is what the cook at my favorite restaurant uses! It must be good, because a good cook uses this!"

>But don't be fooled by the control knobs it is fully electronically controlled.

Electronically controlled or not, there are some advantages to a knob--I think it may be more intuitive, at least for me.

A lot of audio equipment in recent years has been equipped with volume knobs that only send a control signal of some sort. While I think I like the old control better in some ways--you can tell for certain when you hit either zero volume or maximum volume--I like the modern knobs better than a push button, because it feels more intuitive to me. Then...I grew up an in an electronics stone age, so knobs are what I got used to. LOL

 

[revvinkevin]

 <span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">"My concern is that some consumers will see this as a must have item, without considering the venting requirements and heat generation."</span>

 

<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Passatdoc:  What venting requirements?  What "heat generation" concerns?   </span>

 

<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It's an electric wall oven, there is NO venting.  There are also no issues with</span> (excess or exterior) heat generation.<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">  This</span> is a residential grade wall oven, albeit a an extremely costly one, but a <span style="font-size: 12pt;">residential grade wall oven none the less, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> built to the exact same specs as EVERY other </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">residential grade </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">wall oven out there.   </span>

 

<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Just because it looks like a commercial oven, doesn't mean it's built like one (w/o insulation).</span>

 

[launderess]

Author of the Cake Bible series of books tells the story of how she was a young apprentice baker working for a famous chief at the White House.

Story goes a tray of delicate pastries were placed into a Blodgett convection oven; it blew most of them right off the cookie sheets! *LOL*

 

[dustin92]

I've had things blown around in the commercial convection oven, usually a few last cookies on a sheet tray with parchment paper, but have also had foil blown off of pans. I'm always watching carefully to make sure nothing gets sucked into the fan, which has no protection whatsoever- just a large, high cfm fan at the back of the oven, just waiting to be jammed by a piece of foil or the corner of a poorly placed pan. I have on occasion found a few pieces of foil in it, but not enough to jam it, just enough to cause it to vibrate and make noise. Really am not a huge fan (no pun intended!) Of convection ovens.

 

[tolivac]

Shouldn't there be a guard in front of the Boldgett ovens fan/blower to prevent ingestion of items being cooked or their containers-would think the Blodgett designers would do this!

 

[launderess]

Cannot imagine a commercial convection oven not having

some sort of guard/filter before the fan. Even my small counter-top Maxim convection has a metal mesh filter.

Suppose if yon only use the convection for baking and or at least not meats/anything that creates grease/splatters it might not matter.

 

[retrogirl]

I think the french door design is great for a wall oven. I wish more manufacturers offered them. Being fairly short I have a little trouble reaching over the door of a typical wall oven, especially with something like a big roasting pan & turkey.

Fan-of-Fans was asking about residential steam combi-ovens. There are a few that I know of, but they are high end brands and quite expensive. Wolf, Miele, Thermador and Gaggenau all have them.

Virginia

 

[dustin92]

Nope, nothing in front of the fan- I'm not looking at it right now, but there *may* be two single wire bars in front of the fan- nothing more though; it would be easy to get fingers in it if the oven was running in cool down mode (manually turns burners off and fan on with the door open to reduce temperature quickly, also useful for drying out a coworkers' cell phone that had been dropped in the pool lol)

 

[leta]

New to Us

Here's our $50 purchase slightly after I realized the dirty white was spray paint and the way it looks now. We had never seen french door ovens before this and the design seemed genius. It has no bells or whistles but works perfectly and the thing is our small galley kitchen narrows at that end due to a chimney on the opposite wall and the 10" doors means there's no squeezing by.

 

[superocd]

Montague makes (or made) a horizontally-opened oven...

Instead of swinging outwards the two door halves opened from the top and bottom.

I was on the job replacing a remote condenser for an ice machine in a hospital kitchen. There, I saw an oven that I assumed to be an unusually small deck-style unit (with two really small separate chambers). That is until one of the cooks opened the door to take something out. I thought it was cool even though it uses the same mechanism of a standard, vertically opened commercial oven.

It looked like this except it didn't have the lower oven unit. It was much like the upper half, only it was sitting by itself on a stand.

 

[westingguelph]

I cook in a commercial kitchen where we have a Garland electric convection French door oven. Several people have received nasty burns off of the doors either bumping into them or not fully opening them. Personally for that reason I'm not a big fan.

 

[combo52]

Getting Burned On French Door Ovens

This is one of the big reasons that ovens with either french doors or even single swinging doors are not popular in the US, the other big potential danger is lifting something like a hot turkey out of a wall oven and the cheap aluminum roasting pan either bends or you otherwise spill it as you remove it and it spills on you, with a drop door you are pretty well protected from such accidents.

 

John L.

 

[henene4]

I think Germany has - once again - figured out the best way



Neff's Slide&Hide door system. Neff is part of the Bosch/Siemens appliance giant, but always had a special place in the brand lineup: More substantial, better speced kitchen appliances with a few key features that were exclusive to them (mainly Slide&Hide and their own convection system).

Until BSH revised their ovens a few years back with a new convection system, new UI, new kinds of ofens etc. you had to choose between the fancy door and self cleaning. With the redesign, they now are abled to offer the hideing door together with pyrolytic self cleaning.

 

[passatdoc]

Neff

Very nice. I like the fact that one may either hide the door or leave it sticking out, depending on one's needs.

The house in which we lived when I was 2-5 years old was brand new (built 1958) and featured builder=supplied GE French door gas wall ovens. Most of the residents in the neighborhood had little kids. The moms seemed to like having French doors vs a traditional bottom-hinged single door: less chance of curious kids bumping their heads on a open oven door.

 

[combo52]

1958 GE French Door Gas Wall Ovens ?

That I would like to see, GE did not have either FDWOs or any gas cooking equipment for residential market in 1958.It would probably been a Frigidaire electric wall oven if it had FDs in 1958.

 

[passatdoc]

Probably a Frigidaire, looked just like the ones posted above.