Choosing the right oven for your home

After two years of regularly dishing out plenty of cakes, breads, roasts and pies, our old oven finally gave in. A couple of the heating rods on the bottom stopped working, which rendered the temperature control inaccurate and useless. It was finally time to say goodbye to our old, trusty buddy and look for a replacement!

Thus began our search for a new oven, and what followed were a series of questions:
Which brand should we go for? Should we opt for an OTG or a convection microwave oven? What features should we be looking out for?

This is our concise guide to choosing the right oven for your home. 

The first dilemma is usually whether to go for an OTG or a microwave+convection oven. For anyone that bakes regularly, an OTG is the clear choice. It usually has heating rods on both the top and bottom. This ensures that the food is heated from both sides and a small fan on the side disperses the heat evenly. This is perfect for baking cakes, breads and pastries. 

Now, this doesn’t mean that microwave+convection ovens are bad. If you have limited space in your kitchen or if you regularly use a microwave, but want to experiment with baking, then this is the smarter choice. The difference is that convection microwave ovens only have heat coming from one side. This means that the food wouldn’t be baked as evenly as in an OTG. 

For our uses, an OTG was a clear choice. Next, how big should the oven be?

We’d recommend getting an oven that has a capacity of at least 25 litres. This ensures that you can bake larger breads, pizzas and full roast chickens comfortably.  
Other factors that you should consider are the availability of a rotisserie function (for grilled chicken), service centers near you, and power consumption. 

With all this considered, we made our choice! We decided to go with a 60-litre OTG from Borosil. Now we aren’t promoting the brand or recommending this oven to you, but this was what we felt best suited our needs. We hope the above information helps you in selecting an oven for your home! 

Happy cooking & happy baking!