Abstract: The present invention discloses a platen apparatus (300) and method (400) for cooking dough using a combination of convective and conductive heating. The apparatus (300) comprises a platen unit including a top heating assembly (320) and a bottom heating assembly (310) to press a dough ball into a flat disc, the bottom heating assembly (310) including a first heating unit configured to provide conductive heat to the platen unit; a linear motion mechanism (350) configured to move the top heating assembly (320) linearly with respect to the bottom heating assembly (310); and a second heating unit (314) including a secondary heating coil (332) and a blower unit (331) to provide convective heat to the platen unit; and a control unit to control the heating of the platen unit; such that the temperature of the second heating unit (314) is higher than the temperature of the first heating unit.

Abstract: In one exemplary aspect, a smart-oven system includes a recipe module accessing a remote recipe database that comprises one or more recipe instructions, and downloading a downloaded recipe instruction to a local memory of the smart oven. A user-input module receives a user-specified cooking instruction. A cooking module manages one or more oven heating mechanisms in the smart oven according to the downloaded recipe instruction and the user-specified cooking instruction. A personalization module obtains a personalized recipe from a user of the smart oven and uploading the personalized recipe to a remote recipe database. A crowd sourcing module records user entered recipe instructions and automatically calculates cooking time and constitutes both into a complete recipe to be uploaded in the recipe store.