Do you need an oven?

[RMB]

My wife and I have been talking about another mod to our 23' International ...Removing the flimsey Dometic stove/oven and replacing with a better quality cooktop ( Force 10 three burner) and using the new space under it to install two new drawers. We wonder if we are being precipitous! Are we infected with the Modificacious virus?

So the question is, how many chefs out there actually use the oven? Has anyone else done this and rued the decision?

Thanks!

[SteveH]

Some like the oven, some don't. We have both an oven and a microwave, and use the oven much more than the micro. When we bought this trailer we have now, we passed on one just like it that had a convection microwave and no oven, but I suspect others would not have.

I think this is something you will have to decide for yourself based on your life/cooking style.

One thing to consider is if you ever plan to do any camping without hookups. A gas oven works fine without hookups, but you'll have to have generator to us a microwave without hookups.

[vswingfield]

Well, the http://www.airforums.com/forums/f484...-28619-28.html thread has 386 posts (right now) about this exactly.

[Short563]

My wife and I love our oven and use it often! How else could we cook those chocolate chip cookies that you slice from the tube of dough?

[KJRitchie]

We just picked up our 2008 Class 25 and tried the oven for the first time on our shake down trip. The previous owner never used the oven. We wanted to heat up a lasagna so we popped it into the oven. The oven smelled like it was burning off the brand newness and it activated the smoke alarm. My dog hates smoke alarms. We ran the Fantastic fan and kept the door open and eventually the oven smell got better. One thing I noticed their is a tremendous amount of heat coming out the rear vent of the oven. We had to run the stove top vent fan also. Not sure it would be fun using the oven in Texas summers to bake cookies. We have a small toaster oven for that sort of thing.

Kelvin

[timmaah]

Originally Posted by KJRitchie

One thing I noticed their is a tremendous amount of heat coming out the rear vent of the oven. We had to run the stove top vent fan also. Not sure it would be fun using the oven in Texas summers to bake cookies.

But when it is in the 40's outside, the extra heat keeps it nice and cozy inside. The wife is baking some bread at the moment.

[DaveFL]

Bread machine doesn't require an oven, our micro/convection does bake. Cooking indoors is usually limited, very little baking while traveling, good reason to check out bakeries.

[Pahaska]

After 6 years with ovens in my 3 successive Airstreams, I traded my oven with a friend for the cook top and 3 drawers in her, otherwise identical trailer. She yearned for an oven and we used ours to store the frying pan and toaster.

It took only minutes to install my oven in her trailer and the cook top in mine to get me home. The drawers took me a little longer to install the rails and slides once I was back at the storage yard.

The drawers are two shallow drawers and a deeper drawer. The shallow drawers don't hold much. I am seriously thinking of converting the two shallow drawers into one deeper drawer but keeping the outward appearance of two shallow drawers.

[TBRich]

We have an oven and we are glad we do. We've used it quite a bit, actually... for instance, we usually travel for the holidays and it's great to bake a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving or roast a small turkey or ham for Christmas dinner. We've done all these...I think we'd really miss it. (It's a great bread box when it's not in use, too!) We dont have anywhere to install a microwave in the 19' Bambi, so we carry a small inexpensive micro when we know we will have electircity....we use it, too.

[Bill M.]

8 years, never used the oven. We carry bread in it.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by RMB

My wife and I have been talking about another mod to our 23' International ...Removing the flimsey Dometic stove/oven and replacing with a better quality cooktop ( Force 10 three burner) and using the new space under it to install two new drawers. We wonder if we are being precipitous! Are we infected with the Modificacious virus?

So the question is, how many chefs out there actually use the oven? Has anyone else done this and rued the decision?

Thanks!

It's a perennial question and there will be people lining up to say that the either can't live without it or don't know what to do with it as the case may be.

Seeing as how you're in B.C. where it rains you might want to think about keeping it. Most of the no-oven crowd live and camp in the desert southwest or other places where they can count on cooking outside.

But if you always camp where there's electricity, or if you're one of those generator people, well then you can use a convection microwave or something and get by.

Or you might just have a cooking style that doesn't utilize an oven, or you might not cook much at all. Well then.

Me I live and camp where it rains and so we can't count upon cooking outside. We sometimes camp where hookups are unavailable. I don't tote a generator. My personal cooking style involves a good deal of roasts and bread and baked goods of one kind or another. So as you might well imagine I'm not about to give up my oven.

[Alphonse]

Convection/Microwave here and we use both the functions of the oven. I like fresh biscuits. The oven is used more than the cook top because we generally cook on a Coleman gas stove or electric burner outside to keep from stinking the trailer up.

[Globie64]

I'd do bad things for a working oven. The original Magic Chef in our '64 Globetrotter worked really well (oven and two burners, the other two burners were dead) until a series of repairs made the whole thing essentially inoperable. I I've been looking at used but think we'll go with a new Atwood sealed burner 21" gas range. I don't think they bake as well as the old units, but we don't seem to have a great choice in the US. SMEV cooktops are used here but we can't get the ovens. http://www.smev.com/spare.smev.com/c...catalogo_1.pdf

[jdalrymple]

We use ours.

The boondock flexibility is a plus, too.

Regards,

JD

[cwf]

The official nickname for "modicicacious noxiainfectus" is FARKELING. This is a blend of words "functional" and "sparkling" meaning both occur with the activity.

FARKEL on!

[RMB]

Wonderful!

That makes us Farkers!

:-)

[Suzzeee]

Well...we're gonna find out how much we like having an oven...we apparently are not the most observant people on the planet So... we have a micro/conv/cooktop combo in our Sovereign 21 - frankly I've used the micro maybe 5X in 2 years.... so we decide we want a second larger Airstream -- we find a great deal on a 2012 Serenity 28' - I swear we have looked at those pics a zillion times... walked through it last night ... still didn't notice that it had an oven and no microwave Once we got over the "panic" we started talking about how we could toast garlic bread and the hubby could make his biscuits when we boondock (which we do a lot)...so we're gonna see how it goes. If we miss the micro we can always get a small one and stash it somewhere....

[coastal]

We really want a oven in the 25 Eddie Bauer but all the models we can find only have the convection micro and cook top. The 27s have a oven and slide out micro for the most part.

That is the only reason we want a 27. We don't need the extra storage. Is the oven worth a extra 6 k and 2+ feet of extra weight to tow. I say no.. Wife says yes.

I grill a ton and can do most anything in a oven on a grill but my wife wants the oven to control her meals when she cooks

Sure we could add one on a 25 but then we lose the functional space for the micro.

Decesions decessions

[Pahaska]

Having had a 25 and a 28, I say get the bigger trailer. No real difference in towing. Not to carrry more stuff, but to not have everything jumbled.

We had ovens in out 3 Airstreams, but virtually never used them. We finaly traded the oven for a cooktop and drawers. Lots better.

[StreamNTyme]

Originally Posted by RMB

My wife and I have been talking about another mod to our 23' International ...Removing the flimsey Dometic stove/oven and replacing with a better quality cooktop ( Force 10 three burner) and using the new space under it to install two new drawers. We wonder if we are being precipitous! Are we infected with the Modificacious virus?

So the question is, how many chefs out there actually use the oven? Has anyone else done this and rued the decision?

Thanks!

Wish I had known before I ordered an oven which we will get in a couple of weeks. Darn. The Airstream we have now only has a micro conv. and I really miss my oven. Have to have an oven.