Not leaving a cake in the oven long enough is not a Bosch issue.

Do you have trouble with other baked goods? Or is it just your pound cake recipe?

I have a Frigidaire induction/ convection range. When I use convection for baked goods, it cooks super fast and I have to reduce the temp by 25 degrees and shorten the bake time by about 15%. It does a really good job with baked goods. I think you have a defective oven.

You might want to familiarize yourself with what the lemon law is in your state, just in case. I negotiated a replacement DW when the circuit board went out. Just call the manufacturer customer service and be nice and logical. Sometimes it works to use a more open-ended approach and ask what they can do to fix the situation. They will probably require another repair appointment/ attempt before agreeing to replace it. I think most manufacturers will replace if three repair attempts don't fix it. Try to get your three repair attempts before the warranty expires. Make sure customer service documents what is wrong with the oven. Ask the customer service rep to repeat back to you what they log as the complaint/ description of what is not working. You would be surprised how often they get things wrong when logging it in- so this step is important. To get warranty replacement, they might specify that the same part was not working properly in spite of three repair attempts. I think perhaps having the same thing wrong x three might be required and having three different things go wrong with three repairs might not count as warranting a replacement. Be polite and pleasant. Always be nice. Good luck. :)

BTW- I think the reason they agreed to replace the DW without first attempting a repair was because I casually mentioned their competitor's policy and then asked what their policy was. They stepped up to match it because they did not want to get a bad reputation.

If meats and vegetables are roasting fine, the oven is fine. Warranties are only for 1 year. You are out of warranty.

Fortunately the oven is still under warranty because side the complaint was made before the one year warranty expired.
Poundcakes, Japanese chiffon cakes which should be light and airy and springy, oatmeal raisin cookies, cupcakes, honey baked ham all bake nicely on the outside but still raw on the insides. Even after baking the cakes and cupcakes until the outsides are slightly burnt the insides are still gummy. I had to slice the honey baked ham and put back the slices of ham in the oven when my guests and I saw that the center was not warm.
The only baked item that turns out well is the biscotti which are baked in small narrow loaves on a flat cookie sheet. The edges have to be burnt slightly in order for the center to be baked but somehow that enhances the biscotti.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but I wish I had my old Kenmore gas stove and oven. I had bake 40 delicious poundcakes at Christmas for years with that appliance.

@jlcorp Thank you for your suggestions on how to manage the negotiations with Bosch. I’ll be sure to follow the advice.

My state covers only vehicles for the lemon law.

In your oven settings do you have a choice to calibrate your oven? I'd try setting it a bit lower, because it sounds to me like your oven is too hot (outsides done before insides).

Buy an oven thermometer & check your oven's preheat & baking temps. It won't tell you if the sensor or the heating elements or the fan is the cause of your problem, but at least you'll know if the preheat temp or baking temp is way off. Keep in mind electric oven temps are designed to fluctuate throughout the baking cycle by about 25 degrees either way.

Let's hope a simple recalibration will be the fix.

For hams or other roasts, use the probe.

i think awm03 is correct about the oven settings. Before purchasing our convection oven, all the information I read about them was that you would have to adjust all your recipes. The advice across the board was to reduce the recommended baking temperature in the recipes by 25 degrees. The convection in my oven is so strong (it also has an air fry setting) that I also have to shorten the cooking time. Last week I baked chocolate chip cookies and found that the best temperature to make them golden brown on the outside and soft but cooked on the inside was 305 degrees. I have also experimented with starting a cake at 325 degrees and lowering the temperature to 300 degrees at the halfway point. We have used a thermometer to test the accuracy of the oven and it is correct. Once you adjust your recipes, you will find that you do get better results with the convection oven. On a side note, my SIL decided against a convection oven because she did not want to have to re-do all of her recipes. There is a learning curve. Regardless, I think you should keep checking the oven temperature to see if there is anything wrong with the oven.

midcentura,

The problem you describe is attributed to too-high temperature. As suggested above, obtain an oven thermometer (a simple analog dial-type such as pictured). Set your oven to 350°F or 400°F and check the thermometer reading after 30 minutes. It's a good idea when baking sensitive items such as your poundcakes to wait 15 minutes longer after the preheat signal to insure the temperature is stablized at the setpoint, particularly if your oven has a hidden bake element.

Ovens nowadays typically have a procedure outlined in the user guide for adjusting the thermostat calibration. My 2004 GE has an adjustment range of +/- 35°F. (I checked it once with an accessory thermometer. It was spot-on, no adjustment necessary.)

Also as noted above, the rule-of-thumb is reduce the temperature by 25°F when baking an item on convection mode vs. the recipe instructions (unless it's specifically stated for convection). Ovens with electronic control panels typically do that conversion automatically ... choose convection mode, enter the set temperature as 400°F and it'll be changed to 375°F. I use convection for frozen pizza, cookies, canned biscuits, and other quick-type items. Sometimes for chicken breast fillets. Not for cakes, cheesecake, brownies, roasts.

I do use an oven thermometer and wait until that thermometer matches the digital display of the oven temp. You’re right, the separate thermometer usually takes about 15-20 more minutes to reach the oven’s display temp after the oven rings that the desired degrees have been met.
The Bosch technician on the phone directed us to follow the convection baking instructions for baking a cake on the user manual which we did. It resulted in a far more raw center than our second test of regular baking mode which was less gummy at the center but still not fully baked. I think the strong clue here is that anything with a thick mass, whether a big ham or a cake in a cake pan (even a Japanese chiffon cake far less dense than a poundcake recipe) does not cook evenly.

I also did recalibrate the oven temp before it was first used. The separate oven thermometer was reading about 25 degrees cooler than the oven’s digital display. (Maybe the fairy guardian Angel of baking was trying to tell me something!) I’m wondering if that tells me to try another test and bake that dang poundcake at 325 for 78 minutes or how we long it takes for the center to be done. I’ll try lowering it to 300 midway through as well. These tests are pricey because I use the Kerrygold butter! I have used other brands of less pricey butter during my dozens of failed cakes this past year but it all resulted with gummy centers no matter the butter or flour or vanilla extract brands.

So you initially recalibrated the oven to run 25 degrees hotter? That could be your problem right there.

I was reluctant to mention using a thermometer, even though I did.
Most people don't understand that modern electric ovens will signal that they're preheated before they truly are or that baking temps fluctuate throughout the cycle. That's the way the algorithms are designed, for some reason, & each manufacturer has their own. Thermometer watchers will wonder why their ovens don't hit the target temp on preheat & stay there. But once you understand these quirks, at least you can use a thermometer to see if the oven is way, way off.

If you want to test calibration temps, perhaps you can do what Consumer Reports does & buy a bunch of canned biscuits. Use the can temp recommendation, and if the recommended time's like 12-14, use 13 minutes. If the biscuits come out done, golden, & on time, your oven is fine.

For pound cake, can you test the center doneness with a toothpick like with other cakes? You could rely on the toothpick method of checking for doneness and putting back in the oven if it doesn't come out clean? At least you could still salvage the pound cake.

Reset the oven to the original temp setting. Try that at regular bake. And place a temp probe in the center of the cake before the time is up. If it gets to 200 take it out. As mentioned above, this sounds like too high a temp setting. When the center is done, evaluate the outer condition. If it's overcooked, repeat the recipe at a 25-degree lower setting. Before you do these test runs, place the probe in an empty baking pan. This is to check how far up and down the oven allows the temp to swing as it maintains the temp you've set. Too much range can be a sensor malfunction that could explain an overcooked exterior.

"Bosch Benchmark Wall Oven not baking center of cakes"

Maybe you should switch to cupcakes.

Re. baking cookies and cakes...

For cakes:

I forgot to mention in my post that I have found that pre-heating the oven is essential for good results (as others have mentioned). For pre-heating, I set the initial temperature, at the very least, to what the recipe recommends. Once the oven shows it is pre-heated, I put the baked good in the oven. Then I turn the temperature down 25 degrees. I set the timer for half way. Then I reduce the temperature by another 20-25 degrees at the halfway point. I get good results with this method.

For cookies:

I pre-heated the oven to recommended recipe baking temperature (350 degrees). I put the cookies in the oven and then immediately reduced the temperature to 305 degrees. These turned out very nicely with this temperature modification.