Best Oven For Baking Bread In 2021– Buyer’s Guide And Reviews

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Store-bought bread isn’t hard to come by. The real challenge is to make your own. It takes patience, practice, and most of all – attention to detail. 

Below is our very own, curated list of the best products available on the market! 

Reviews of The Best Oven For Baking Bread in 2021

1.Toshiba ML-EM34P Smart Countertop Microwave Oven– Best to Buy

The Toshiba ML-EM34P is a smart microwave oven. With 23 different presets for you to choose from, it brings cooking power and flexibility all packed into a neat, compact box.

It easily fits onto a standard countertop and for further convenience, is powered by smart technology. If you happen to have an Alexa Echo device, or a smartphone – it unlocks new possibilities for you.

The broad settings and the responsive design let you easily control the microwave oven remotely, either through the app or through Alexa directly. 

This oven has a smart humidity detector. Depending on how moist the food you are cooking is, the oven will automatically increase its cooking power, for optimal results. This microwave is best suited for those looking for a bit of a bang for their buck.

Why We Love It:

• Spacious and powerful enough to cook a variety of foods

• Hands-free operation – controlled remotely with your phone or through Alexa

• Smart Humidity Detector – Adjusts the way it cooks based on what’s cooking

• Energy efficient and compact in terms of design

Take Note:

• The light on the inside flickers sometimes. It doesn’t seem too steady at times.

• A few users reported that the oven would keep cooking even after the preset cooking cycle finishes.

2. Cuisinart TOA-60 Convection Toaster Oven Airfryer- Best Toaster Oven for Baking Bread

This toaster oven sports a powerful 1800-watts. It doubles as an air fryer, too. With a total of 7 preset cooking functions, this oven does it all. 

From air frying, convection baking and broiling, over to regular bake and broil, as well as toast warming – this extends far beyond a regular toaster oven.

It's spacious enough to bake a 12-inch pizza or roast a 4-pound chicken. More than enough for a decent-sized loaf of bread. All of this combined makes it the best toaster oven for baking bread. 

Another useful function to consider is the adjustable thermostat. It can auto-bake for a total of 60 minutes. It comes with its own oven rack, an extra baking pan, as well as an air fryer basket.

Why We Love It:

• The air frying option works fast to cook a variety of food

• Spacious enough to allow bigger dishes to be cooked efficiently

• 60-minute auto bake timer and thermostat, which shuts off at the end

• Includes baking pan, oven and air frying rack for your convenience

• A nice safety feature: The oven shuts off  when the door is opened

Take Notes:

• The oven timer knob is made out of flimsy plastic. It looks like it could break rather easily.

• Some cooking functions have rather intense temperatures that are considerably off of what the indicator says they are.

3. Oster French Convection Countertop and Toaster Oven- Best Countertop Oven for Baking Bread

In terms of size, this countertop oven is a bit large. This is to accommodate the extra-large interior. With two racks to give you more freedom and flexibility, this oven is powerful and spacious. Perfect for those who are looking to cook at great capacities. 

A single one-pull door lets you open and close the oven with ease. Its size isn’t the only thing that makes it the best countertop oven for baking bread. 

It comes with 8 preset functions, but the one that really stands out is the turbo convection mode. Not only does this allow more even cooking, but also lets you cook faster. The browning you can achieve with this function is the best in its range.

Finally, the intuitive digital controls let you cook food at a steady 150° F for up to 6 hours. In addition to this, there is a 90-minute timer that lets you keep baking at any temperature you set.

Why We Love It:

• The sleek design and stainless steel exterior will looks great in any kitchen countertop

• Extra-large interior countertop oven for all of your bread-baking needs!

• 8 powerful cooking functions, including turbo convection mode

• Exceptional temperature control with consistent results

• Comes with a decent amount of cooking accessories and they're easy to clean

• User-friendly digital controls

Take Notes:

• The door is really sensitive. When its open, even a small nudge can cause it to snap closed.

• The toaster and broil functions take slightly longer to reach high temperatures

• Not a great pick for smaller kitchen counter

4. Panasonic Microwave Oven NN-SN966S: Best Oven For Baking Bread at Home

Coming in at number four is a high-powered microwave oven from trusted brand Panasonic. The powerful 1250-watts deliver steady and powerful cooking capabilities. This microwave oven extends beyond just defrosting and warming up food.

The Inverter Technology makes sure the heat is always distributed evenly. It also features a special turbo defrost function, letting you defrost food twice as fast! 

Convenience and efficiency are the name of the game. 14 preset menu items let you quickly select and set the optimal cooking style for certain food types. There is also a "Keep Warm Feature" which keeps your food warm until ready.

This countertop oven has a capacity of 2.2 cubic foot which is large enough to cook meal for a large family. However, it's not suitable for smaller kitchen because of the large exterior.

The digital control panel is high-resolution and easy to use.  It's also easy to clean the inside and outside of the oven. 

Furthermore, this oven has a genius sensor. It is capable of detecting the amount of food put inside. Based on the amount, the oven automatically sets the cooking power and time for the perfect results.

Why We Love It:

• An exceptionally powerful microwave with smart control

• Inverter technology will bake your bread evenly

• Defrosts food at lightning speed!

• It comes with a child safety lock 

• 14 preset cooking options, to allow you quick and easy operation

• Genius Sensors automatically adjust time and temperature based on what is inside

Take Notes:

• The control buttons are not made out of chrome, like earlier Panasonic models.

• The door isn’t perfectly aligned. A minor inconvenience.

• The interior light is lame

5. Cuisinart TOB-260N1 Chef's Convection Toaster Oven

Not sure if you need a microwave, or a toaster oven? Why not compromise with Cuisinart’s Chef’s Convection Toaster Oven?

The cooking power of strong 1,800 watts will give you the upper hand in cooking and baking. If you’re not the type to fiddle with setting and fine-tune the temperature, you can rely on 15 cooking functions.

The spacious interior allows you cook multiple items in one go, which is a real time saver. For that, you can use two racks at once. You can even position the tray in 4 different heights to adjust bigger items. 

Its special Dual Cooking mode is going to let you cook using 2 different temperatures. You could set 2 separate temperatures for the top and the bottom. Perfect for a good, crunchy loaf! 

Set the top temperature higher for browning and crisping. You can set the bottom one to something lower, to make sure the bottom of the loaf doesn’t get seared. If you’re in a hurry, the speed convection option gets this oven fired up instantly, so you can say goodbye to preheating.

It also comes with many useful accessories including, oven racks, baking & broiling pan, 13 inch Pizza Stone etc. And they're easy to clean.

Why We Love It:

• A spacious oven with high cooking power

• A good number of preset functions

• The oven light lets you know the progress of items when cooking

• The digital interface is really useful for tracking temperature

• Dual Cooking mode to make the top and bottom of your bread come out perfect

• Speed Convection for when you’re in a pinch. No need to keep preheating!

• Powerful and yet compact enough to fit any kitchen size

Take Notes:

• Give it more time to heat up. It’s remarkably spacious

• Don’t brush the button labels too hard when pressing. They are known to come off.

6. Lodge Pre-Seasoned Cast Iron Double Dutch Oven: Best Oven For Baking Sourdough Bread

This entry is a bit of a departure from the toaster ovens and microwaves. While you can still bake bread without any issues in all of the previous entries – this one is slightly unconventional. It might not be a countertop appliance, but it is the absolutely best oven for baking sourdough bread.

This heavy gauge cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid retains heat like nothing you’ve seen before. While it’s technically not an oven, in the sense that it won’t generate heat – it makes the crispiest, crunchiest bread you’ve ever had a chance to taste!

You can place it onto a stovetop, stick it right into the oven, or place it against the blazing ashes of a campfire. Many cultures still use the dutch oven, not only to bake, but also roast, broil or cook foods. 

It’s heavy and large enough to accommodate any bread recipe. Plus, when it comes to bread-making tools – you won’t find a cheaper yet more reliable oven to use.

Why We Love It:

• The most reliable oven you’ll ever use to bake bread

• It’s very easy to carry and transport

• Retains heat like no other oven ever could

Take Notes:

• Absolutely no cooking functions. This isn’t for set-and-forget cooking. It must be attended to at all times.

• The inside of the pot can be damaged and scratched if the utensils are used too roughly on it.

7. Panasonic NE-1054F- Best Commercial Oven For Baking Bread

To finish off our list on a good note, we bring you one more powerful microwave oven for bread baking! Make no mistake. While this microwave can still be used residentially, it is the best commercial oven for baking bread.

This is a heavy-duty, commercial-grade microwave oven. The energy settings have been optimized, to make the heat travel the fastest possible route to reach the loaf and bake it. With 6 different power settings, and 2 or 3 stage cooking modes, anything is possible.

For manual operation and your convenience – you can use the 10 memory pads to program in and save up to 20 different recipes. This lets you summon up your perfect cooking temperature and time on a whim, bringing it to a start in just a press of a button. 

It features a nice and solid door handle that allows you to easily open and close the unit securely. All in all, this is the absolute best microwave oven in its range and a bread-baker’s essential.

Why We Love It:

• Intense and radiating heat, optimized to quickly and efficiently cook and bake

• The parts (including the door handle) are really durable and long lasting

• Manually programmable settings to customize your baking experience

• Baking becomes a breeze with easy operation, easy cleaning and cleverly designed buttons.

Take Notes:

• Some users reported that the melting function degrades and becomes less effective over time.

• It has only one single power level, however, you can adjust the cooking time

Convection vs Conventional Oven For Baking Bread:

When choosing the best oven for bread, this question might inevitably pose itself. Do you go for a convection oven, or choose the conventional one? 

Convection ovens, thanks to their fans, make baking bread faster. In fact, there may be additional heaters tied to the fan, too. As good as that is for baking speed, it does have a downside.

The amount of heat coming from the heaters might actually deform your bread’s shape. Excessive heat may cause bulging and bubbling of the dough.

On modern convection ovens, you might even have to adjust the recipe and temperature settings. In fact, some suggest that you should decrease the temperature by 25°F from what it says in the recipe.

On the other hand, a conventional oven has no built-in fan inside the unit. Instead, they usually feature 1 or 2 heating elements. They can only heat the bread from either the top or the bottom of the oven. 

Therefore, conventional ovens are not able to create an even temperature, resulting an uneven baking of your bread or other food items.

Takeaway:

Conventional ovens might be a better choice for regular bread. They're also more comfortable to cook and you can easily get cooking recipes. Convection works just fine for artisan bread, but regular types are best left to the conventional ovens.

Types of Oven For Baking Bread:

Gas Ovens:

Gas ovens provide a more humid baking environment than the other types. It is also fueled by a resource that is cheaper than electricity. 

When it comes to baking bread, it doesn’t exactly bake evenly. Gas ovens have hot and cold spots. This makes it slightly harder to bake something evenly.

They heat up quickly, but the heat is not spread evenly. Unlike electric ovens, gas ovens typically do not have two heaters. The heater they have is usually at the bottom of the oven.

Convection fans are rare on gas ovens. If you tried baking bread in a traditional gas oven, it could burn the base of your loaf.

Electric Ovens:

Electric ovens are considered the best oven type for bread. This is because they offer superior temperature control and even baking. With a multitude of heaters (usually two) positioned above and below what is being baked – browning and crusting both sides of the loaf is much easier. 

Electric ovens will also provide more consistent, dry heat. These ovens will take a bit longer to preheat and reach the desired temperatures. Once it does – it will stay at that temperature. There is less humidity in the baking process.

However, it does consume a fair bit of electricity. It will add some oomph to your electricity bills. Even when it comes to price ranges – electric ovens tend to be on the more expensive side.

Microwave Ovens:

It’s true, you can bake dough in a microwave oven. You might need some additional baking equipment to make it happen. Yes, they are energy efficient, they do cook faster – but it might not be the best idea to use a microwave to bake your bread in. 

You could use it, at the very best, to decrease the time the dough will take to rise.

It might be tempting to know that it is possible that, you could whip up bread in a few minutes. But keep in mind, you won’t be using the same ingredients you normally would. And you will probably have to bake a significantly smaller loaf. 

Don’t expect it to come out browned and crispy, either. Think of it as a sugar-free sponge cake. That’s about the best you can come up with if you choose this route.

Watch the following video. It's really interesting to see a real life challenge of baking bread in a microwave. If you try to bake bread in a microwave, you can follow this recipe.

The Ideal oven setting For bread Baking:

People often get confused when it’s come to selecting the ideal temperature settings to bake bread. Because, there’re usually no preset temperature settings for baking bread in an oven.

Well, the ideal temperature setting highly depends on the type of bread you’re baking on your oven. Let’s discuss in brief:

Oven setting for baking a Lean-dough loaves of bread:

The lean dough loaves of bread is also known as artisan style loves. A lean dough is consist of flour, water, salt, yeast. There’re no dairy products involved when making them. Lean dough breads are easier to make since you only need 4 ingredients.

To bake a lean-dough bread in an oven, you will need to preheat it for about 15 minutes to a very hot 475°F or 246°C. Alternatively, you can also place the dough directly on to the oven to avoid preheating.

Oven setting for baking a regular heavier dough loaves of bread:

The ideal temperature range of baking regular dough loaves of bread should be 180-200°F. You will need to preheat the oven for 25-35 minutes before placing the dough. However, you should follow the temperature settings in the bread recipe.

The Best Oven rack position for baking bread:

Oven rack placement is very important to get the best cooking result for any kinds of dishes you make on your oven. And bread baking is no exception.

Generally, ovens come with two separate heating sources, one at the top and other one at the bottom. When you start preheating your oven, both of these sources started heating the food from both of the sides.

If you want to get the bread brown on the bottom, you should use the lower center rack. This positioning is also great for browning the bottom of pizza crust.

How to Choose The Best Oven For Baking Bread:

Selecting an oven for baking bread is not that hard. You should only consider the following points when shopping for an oven for bread.

1. Oven Size And Capacity:

Size and capacity are things you want to consider carefully. There are no universal sizes to ensure perfect bread-baking. In fact, it depends a lot on how much bread you want to bake. And which kind, too. 

Keep in mind that the available space in your kitchen will also play an important role. Take all of these details into account and decide upon the optimal size and capacity for your needs. Remember, bigger is not always necessarily better.

2. Timer & Temperature Control:

Being able to set the ideal, consistent temperature is extremely important. Precision and patience are the only two things you need to make perfect bread. A timer is a convenience, if anything.

It has its uses, in the sense that you could just ‘set and forget’ the baking process. It could be useful if you are planning to make larger quantities of bread on a frequent basis.

Knowing that you have a good oven to rely on temperature wise is important. Try to look for an oven that lets you customize and tweak the temperature. The more control you have over the heaters – the more flexible your options will be, too.

3. Useful cooking functions:

There are not that many cooking options dedicated especially to bread. While you could benefit from some functions, like grill or convection cooking – overall baking comes down to just turning the oven on. There aren’t any specific preset functions that could make this easier for you.

However, what could prove useful is any function that lets you save and load your preferred temperature or time settings. Even though it doesn’t affect baking performance-wise, it should still make things easier for you, by automating a part of the process.

4. Brands & Your Budget:

Always remember that the most expensive brand of an oven won’t be the best one. At least, not for your particular needs. So, before you consider setting aside a big chunk of money, consider this instead. 

Have some time to think about how you’ll use it. Are you going to open a bakery, requiring fresh loaves of bread in great quantity? Are you only going to bake bread for special occasions? 

Depending on what you are looking for, you might not need to spend that much money, after all. Make sure to set a firm budget and stick to it. Remember that you also might need to pick up a few specialized accessories to bake bread, too.

Some Useful Tips To Bake Bread In An Oven:

Before we had temperature control, fancy ovens and baking functions – bread was still made. In fact, some claim that the best loaves of bread were baked the old school way.

How do you bake that crispy, crunchy goodness to perfection? What makes the crust so golden and the middle so pillow soft? 

What follows is a detailed guide, with some very useful tips, to help you make the best homemade bread you’ve ever tasted!

Pro tip 1: Rise Your Bread Temperature at 70°F

Just like baking temperature is important – rising temperature is too. Make sure you rise your bread at 70° F. During the more temperate seasons, you might have to put the dough into a cooler to make this possible.

Pro tip 2: Using Baking Stone/Bricks For Even Baking

If you have a baking stone, you could give your bread that glamorous, crispy crust. Not everyone has a baking stone, though. What could work as a substitute are bricks. 

Take two bricks and place them to the bottom of your oven. Make sure you preheat the oven with the bricks inside. This will ensure the bricks retain the heat and make the bottom half of your loaf brown evenly with the top.

Pro tip 3: Slash The Bread Diagonally To Get Perfect Shape

Having trouble slicing your loaf after baking? Here’s a professional baking life-hack! Before you put your loaves into the oven, slash them diagonally over the top. 

Do this about 20 minutes before it’s time to bake them. By giving them that diagonal slash, the loaf will be able to spring during baking without cracking the crust.

Pro tip 4: Use Quality Flour For Best Result

Don’t forget that the type of flour affects the way the dough will rise drastically. Different flour mixes and kinds will all yield different results. The quality of the flour also plays an important role. 

There is no denying that the best flour you could use comes from grinding it yourself. Not everyone can do this, though. But, if you want your bread to rise more – you’ll want to use flour types that are naturally higher in gluten.

Pro tip 5: Use vitamin C For Best Rises Of Bread

Here is a useful, yet unconventional tip for bakers looking for the best rises. If you find that your dough just isn’t rising as well as you’d like, or not quickly enough – try some vitamin C! 

Only a tiny little bit of vitamin C powder (or a crushed tablet) can increase the rising time. It really speeds things up and not only that, but it also makes sure it’ll rise perfectly.

FAQ's Of Home Bakers:

Q1: Can I bake bread in a convection microwave oven?

Ans: Yes, you can. The only problem is that your bread won’t come out with a brown, crunchy crust. A microwave, even when used with the best baking equipment available, will never bake bread like a traditional oven. It will work, it just might not yield the best results. It’s not recommended.

Q2: Should bread be baked in the middle of an oven?

Ans: Yes, the middle rack of an oven is usually the best place to bake bread. Most ovens will have heaters closest to the top and bottom. While you could bake your bread on the top or the bottom rack, it is risky. Being so close to the source of heat, the heaters will transfer temperature much faster to the dough.

While this means better browning and faster crusting, it also means faster burning. The middle of the oven allows the heat to circulate the dough evenly, top and bottom at the same time. This allows easier and more even baking.

Q3: How long do you bake bread at 350 degrees?

Ans: This really depends. Most types of bread are baked at 350° F. Whole wheat bread, sourdough bread, ciabatta and even rye bread are all baked at this temperature. There are, of course, some exceptions.

Multigrain bread and pita bread are always baked at significantly higher temperatures. But still, the amount of time you are going to spend baking depends on other factors, too.

These are things like the size of the loaf, the type of flour you are using, and whether or not you are using a bread pan. Usually, the rule of thumb for most bread types, is to bake them on 350° F for about 40 minutes. You’ll be able to tell the loaf is done once the crust turns golden. Also, if you tap it lightly, you should hear a hollow sound.

Final Words:

Baking bread can be defined as art. With the amount of precision and patience it requires – some compare it to art. If you are looking for the best oven for baking bread, performance-wise, the opinions are split. 

For a modern approach, you can’t go wrong with the Panasonic Countertop Commercial Microwave Oven. There is simply no topping it. 

However, if you want a more budget-friendly approach, with a rustic look – go with the Dutch Oven. Both will yield amazing results in their own way!