Your oven sounds like it is working fine. Baked items in a pan with sides, like brownies, won't take any less time since only the top is exposed. Roasted meats and poultry in a roasting pan will benefit a lot more from convection - they will take a little less time and will be brown on the outside and juicy on the inside. Cookies will depend on a number of factors - the kind of cookie sheet you're using and what kind of convection your oven has. If it's "true" convection with a heating element around the fan, the heat will be a bit more even than regular convection where the heat comes from a bottom element and the fan blows the air around. You'll have to experiment a little with turning the sheets. 15-17 minutes to pre-heat the oven seems about right.

If I understand correctly, you probably can set your oven for convection in two different ways. In one way, probably the one you used, you tell the oven the desired temperature for nonconvection cooking and it lowers the oven temperature for convection automatically, giving you what is considered equivalent cooking environment -- in this case, 325 degrees convection is equivalent to 350 degree conventional. In the second way to cook convection, you set the temperature you want directly, so that no automatic adjustment is made. The first way can be convenient if you are following a recipe that calls for a certain temperature in conventional, and you are not sure what would happen if you use convection. But your experience seems to suggest that you got the desired result with your hens, but it took too long. It seems to me that if you usually cook the hens at 425 in conventional, 325 in convection is a little too low. I think the discrepancy in oven temperatures is not that great. Does your owner's manual give you any guidance on the temp setting for convection for different roasts? Ours does. We have a Bosch. I think you need to experiment a little. I would google convection oven temp and see what turns up.

Funny I had some of the same constraints. I have a 30" Wolf cooktop and like it very much. I am now used to it, but 2 years ago when I did my kitchen, I went from a 30" range to the 30" cooktop, it did at the time feel a bit compacted to me because the range had the controls in the front vs. the top as on the cooktop. I am now used to it and while your "big" my not be my big, I don't have any problems using wide pans simultaneously on my cooktop. To make risotto for instance, I use two wide (9 -10") pans on two burners back to front and don't have any problems with the space. 10" is my widest pan however. Surface wise it hasn't felt tight to me. However, there are 2 cooks in the family and it felt a bit close to me in the beginning going from the 30" range to the 30" cooktop but now it is not an issue. I do love the cooktop, though. Performance-wise it is very good. If the latter consideration is relevant to you, however, you may also want to take a look at the Viking designer series - the cooking surface spans the 30" width, controls in front. Do study its outputs though - for me, the high at 14KBTU may have been fine although I preferred the 15KBTU, but 2 years ago, the low was 1.2KBTU and that was too high for the things I do want to be able to make some times. At 675-700btu simmer settings for the viking now, that is a LOT better. The Wolf has 300 or 400btu lows and I find that I use them quite a bit so I would not have been happy with 1100btu for a low. I have a Bosch oven and like it very much indeed. I have a 30" 700 series but since Bosch came out with new models this year, I don't claim to know anything about them. The 700series is a relatively basic oven even though it was their top offering 2 years ago - bake, convection bake, convect. roast, broil, convect. broil and warm, thaw, dehydrate or some modes like that. It is self-cleaning although I've only ever used it once. Goes down to 100degrees in "warm", 120degrees in "dehydrate", 170degs in the cooking modes. The direction of the heat source distinguishes the modes. It does an excellent job with temperature control (+/- 7 or 9degrees per my experience except for when you open the door in which case the temp can drop sizeably depending on mode; Miele Wolf and Gaggenau are even more precise & hold temperatures to within 5-7degrees), very even whether in bake, broil or roast; I liked its size as it was a smaller oven. I LOVE its interface. I noticed Consumer Reports doesn't like it either but haven't been able to figure the reviews out. I will say that you do have to experiment a bit to get used to how to cook in it - either it is the convection or the Bosch itself but there are things I have had to consciously start to do to ensure good performance; I did have some corkers in the beginning before I cottoned on to that. Placing the rack too close to the front of the oven instead of in the center or towards the back will interrupt its' air circulation (in convection) and the net result can be a asymmetric cooking. Likewise sorting out how to load the racks for multi-rack cooking so that they are evenly spaced out else same story. That sort of stuff. Anyhow, I like my Bosch oven very much but claim no knowledge of even any of their new models. I absolutely love the cooktop, but I think that the oven maybe what I play with even more than the cooktop.

My slide-in KA range is being installed today. The mico wave is already installed. I love the look of the appliances and hope I will love the cooking as well. If it is anything like my old KA I know I will be happy. I have heard about the self-cleaning problem, but hope it has been resolved. I read about that a few months ago. A little tip-my salesperson said he has the same range, and when he does really heavy cooking for company etc, he puts those little aluminum range covers around the burners to catch drips, etc. then when the cooking is done, he throws them away and (Wa La) the range is clean.