There are gas wall ovens if you want one. I posted this on the chowhound cookware forum and this is the gist of what I posted. It used to be conventional wisdom that gas was moist heat, due to the release of water as part of the products of combustion and electric dry heat. No one has actually measured humidity, that I can find, in ovens to say if this is the case. I have used both kinds of ovens over many(50) years and found very little difference. I almost think that gas may be a little drier,due to the following reasons. There is much more ventilation with gas so the humidity from the products of combustion are ventilated out. If you read the bread baking forums, you will find they have a hard time keeping steam in a gas oven needed for the first part of baking and resort to covering the bread to steam it. I have read stories of roasts being better in a gas oven. Sometimes they will say it makes a better crust or is juicier. People will attribute this to the moist heat but in reality it is not going over the optimum internal temperature that makes a roast juicy and it is a drying effect that makes the external parts crispy. This is why convection is such a good thing. On the other hand the electric oven is more of a closed system and does hold the humidity given off by food or added humidity better. I think an electric oven may be better for baking cakes and things that rise better because it does hold a little more humidity and allows the rising action to work a little more before it sets and have read baking forums that say this. I have seen it advised to open the door of an electric oven a little, a few times to let the moisture out toward the end of baking a cake. Another consideration is that once you raise the temperature of the air, the relative humidity is much less in both and not that different percentage wise. All these things are going to depend on what you are cooking and the build of the oven. Some advantages of electric that may depend on the brand and features it has. Some ovens have a thermostat that has a very narrow temperature swing, as litle as 2 degrees. Some have the more conventional 25 degree swing on each side of the setting. Some electric ovens have a third element around the convection fan that can produce a more even heat especially when it is full. All gas oven and some electric have just the fan. There may be additional baking and roasting modes that make use of top and bottom elements to produce certain effects. For example a roasting mode may utilize the top element more to produce more browning from the top. Electric ovens are more inclined to be self clean but there are gas self cleaning ovens. Gas ovens may have an infrared broiler. Good Luck in your search.

“I've never had anything but electric, but I've always turned my baked good 180 degrees at least once. None of my ovens have ever had the same temperature front and back...the back half always cooks faster!” To the food, it makes no difference what kind of heat is being used. Heat is heat, simply BTUs. However, how the heat is delivered will make a big difference on how the food end up being cooked. Here is the science on heating (cooking) food. There are three main and different ways to heat up food: 1. By microwave, which I will not discuss because it’s OT. 2. By infrared radiation 3. By conduction. Before I move on, let me point out that “Convection oven” is somewhat a misnomer. It should be called “Forced hot air”, because all heat produces convection, with or without a convection fan. Infrared (IR) heating is when you are in sunlight, you can be heated up even the air temperature is freezing. Conduction is when you park your car under the sun and you first entry your car and you feel that blast of hot air. Electric oven has electric heating elements which can generate IR only. The IR hits the food and the oven walls, raising the temperature of the walls and the food, which then heats up the air, the air then heats everything by conduction. Gas heats by exothermal chemical reaction. The heat generated heats the air and any objects near the flames. The heated food and objects then heat up the air by conduction. IR is a form of light, which is electro magnetic radiation, and light travels only in straight line, therefore anything in shadows will not be heated. Furthermore, Dark color objects get heated faster. Gas heats up the air, hot air moves by convection and heats the food all around. Electric heating elements are either on 100% or off, there is no in between. When it is on, the food gets the maximum IR heating. Electric heat is 100% dry heat. Gas heat is valved from low to high and gas combustion does produces water as one of the by products of the chemical reaction. All the above, combining the particular design characteristic of the physical oven, will give you different end results, depending your cooking skills, habits and recipes. I am not sure I answered your questions. :-) dcarch

You should do a search on the appliance forum - there are a number of threads on this very topic. Here is one of them. Here is a link that might be useful: Gas vs. Electric ovens

There are a few differences in gas and electric ovens. You will find that chefs and manufacturers would say gas is “moist” heat because water is a byproduct of combustion and so electric must be dry. The problem is they are not looking at the whole oven and the process of cooking. What are sources of moisture and what happens to it? There is moisture released with the combustion of gas. Food also produces quite a bit of moisture in the cooking process. I read just a couple of weeks ago on the Miele website that a cake baking provides the equivalent of the 30 % steam setting on their steam oven. Imagine how much moisture is produced with some other foods. Gas ovens have a much bigger vent to vent the products of combustion and moisture from food. You have a lot more movement of air through a gas oven while an electric oven has a much smaller vent, holding on to the moisture produced by the food. Reading cooking and baking forums you hear these comments over and over. Gas ovens put more heat and moisture into the kitchen. Gas ovens are great for roasting and browning. If you read about the Maillard reaction, you will see that you must have drying to allow the temperature of the surface to rise and browning chemical reactions to take place. Some bread bakers want to add steam at the beginning of baking to promote starch gelatinization for a specific type of crust. They report it is much more difficult to keep added steam in a gas oven. Baking is a complex interaction of variables so it is difficult to make hard and fast rules because you only have to change one or two of the variables and get a different result. Some bakers say that cakes don’t rise as well if they had an electric oven and go to gas. Sometimes they say gas produces a dry looking cake. This again has to do with starch gelatinization being prolonged in an electric oven giving a little longer rise. This doesn’t mean you can’t bake in gas. I think some recipes work well in gas and over the years, you keep recipes that work and discard those that don’t. Cake mixes are formulated to work in different conditions so work with both. Things with more sugar may also show more difference. Eveness in baking is tricky. That’s what everybody wants. Convection is marketed as the answer to even heat but it can make air currents that make hot spots. The fan is drying to the surface of what you are baking or roasting so that part browns quicker if it gets exposed to an air current. Some companies try to fix that by having two fans, baffles or a reversing fan. Some ovens have a variable speed fan. The fan does change the direction of heat so that it comes from more directions instead of the bottom. Many recipes for cakes and pies were developed with the heat coming from the bottom. There are very expensive electric ovens that don’t have it right and my DILs Bosch gas oven is pretty good. My Electrolux oven is pretty even but has other problems. Aside from the the nature of the heat, electric ovens can have more control. They may have a third element (true or European convection) and direct heat from the top or bottom, more from the top for roasting. A few gas ovens may have these features now. They can have very tight control of temperature, maybe +/- 2F but I’m not sure how much that matters. More important to me is the range of temperature. My current oven has 80-450F and the fan can blow with the heat off or up to 450F. Some ovens only go as low as 225F. Both of my ovens have slow or fast fan speed. I know bakers that use gas and electric. Some commercial ovens have steam injectors and ventilators to control humidity. Gas broilers come come in two forms, the first is a conventional one that doesn’t get that hot. There are also gas infrared broilers that heat evenly and get hot but might be smaller.