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Should I turn on my oven's convection fan for preheating? Or should I only turn it on when I put the cake inside?

Because my oven OFTEN turns off by itself when preheating, I think it might be the fan.

I have researched a lot about this, oven turning off on it's own means the lack of airflow or overheating, I preheat the oven at 180 Celsuis for 20 minutes with the fan turned on.

I'm asking this question because it happens often times. So trial and error doesn't really work here, if it did turn off all the times, I could try a lot of things to narrow down the problem. I have tried preheating without the fan and it still turned off again if memory serves me right. No I was wrong we never tried this, because mom persists to use fan all the time.

This is a gas oven with physical rotating knobs, and about a handful of times when I was about to put the cake inside, I found the oven turned off, the lights are on and the fan is on but the flame is off, and the oven is somewhat cold and if I turn it on, it works fine, I never found it turned off with food inside.

After reading your comments I feel like I'm not doing the preheating correctly.

I searched more and found a suggestion on the internet to preheat the oven 25 Celsius degrees above the required temperature to cook [source].(https://avivservicetoday.com/ovens/how-to-preheat-your-oven/) But I don't like this since my oven doesn't have digital temperature display, I might overheat it or even underheat, it could ruin the cake.

There's also another suggestion saying preheating longer than x minutes could automatically turn the oven off, but as I had read the manual of my oven before asking this question, such thing was not mentioned.

About the fan, the manual suggests to use it to cook the core of food efficiently. In spite of other ovens which suggest to use the fan for browning the tops.

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    Hi Shayan, a few questions: what kind of oven do you use? I assume electric because of the convection fan (gas ovens don't have those as far as I know), is it with physical knobs you turn to set the temperature or with digital controls? How do you notice it turns off and what happens when you turn it on again?
    – Tinuviel
    Nov 1, 2019 at 10:04
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    & to further clarify - do you mean the light goes off, the fan stops & the oven will if left simply go cold after a time? Otherwise it sounds simply like the thermostat is doing its job & switching on & off to preserve your preset temperature.
    – Tetsujin
    Nov 1, 2019 at 10:19
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    @Tinuviel gas ovens can have a convection fan too, my mother had one.
    – Luciano
    Nov 1, 2019 at 10:24
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    I'm going to ask the classic question: what does the oven manual say?
    – Juliana Karasawa Souza
    Nov 1, 2019 at 14:17
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    Do you know if your oven automatically turns burners on and off to keep a certain temperature? Apparently, this technology exists in gas ovens, applianceassistant.com/appliance-repair/range-stove-repair/….
    – rumtscho ♦
    Nov 4, 2019 at 9:33

2 Answers 2

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After so much trial and error, I found the solution, and yet, it's so simple:

Leave the oven door open for 2 minutes when preheating, then close.

And I also turn the fan on for preheating, I think it will make it more effective.

It doesn't turn off by itself anymore.

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As far as I know, pre-heating to 25°-30° allows for the decrease in temperature when you put whatever in. It looses 10° every second that your oven is open. 

  There's also another suggestion saying. 
   preheating longer than x minutes could. 
   automatically turn the oven off.

Your burners go on and off based on the oven temp. When the burners go off, the light will reflect that,, and once the temp drops by x amount, it goes on again. So if the light is out and you have turned it on, then you know it's baking time.

If it is still cold, then it may just mean that you have to call the repair man...

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