Simple but profound

I can’t believe I have been cooking this long but i still pose the following question. When roasting broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash etc and it says “heat oven to 400” .... do you set your oven on bake or roast setting?

My oven doesn't have a "Roast" setting. I imagine most recipes would use a "Bake" setting. I think that's the traditional one.

I believe the roast setting would also turn on the upper element.

[Robin Garr]

Is yours a convection oven, John? Regular (non-convection) ovens don't distinguish between roast and bake. Same setting, but when you crank the heat up to 400 or more, you're roasting. Since you're cooking right at 400, you could probably go either way, but since you want to, er, roast the veggies, I think I'd try the roast setting first. Or do a kitchen laboratory experiment and try it one way one time, the other way the next time, and see which comes out better.

Here's a Baltimore Sun article that might shed a little more light on this topic:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xp ... story.html

Sorry John, I've never seen either bake or roast options on an oven, only a temperature setting

Sorry John, I've never seen either bake or roast options on an oven, only a temperature setting

I've seen plenty of those ovens (even owned them), but the one I own now has an electric convection.oven with different modes of heating: baking, convection baking, convection roasting, hi/lo broiling. The convection roasting setting turns on both the lower and upper heating elements while the convection fan is running.

Yes, all my previous ovens ovens just had a bake temp or broiler. When we redid kitchen new one is convection (Samsung). Choices are convection roast, convection bake, or bake. I believe for my oven
Bake- traditional oven style
Convection bake - adds low speed fan to equalize temp through different levels
Convection roast - medium speed fan, low broiler as well as lower elements

As long as careful about timing (obviously faster) , I'm generally happy with the conv. roast for most meats and veggies, better crisping/browning

You Americans...

We'll probably get ovens like that in 10 years time.

By which time you'll have some other gizmo.