The invention relates to a method (700) for operating the cooking device, especially a commercial cooking device cooking device (100; 300; 400; 600) with different operating modes (720, 730, 740), which has at least one heating device (121, 130), a main cooling fan (112), at least one preferably electrical component in a first space (116) directly acted upon by the main cooling fan (112), at least one other preferably electrical component (570 A, 570 B) which is to be cooled in a second space (150) not directly acted upon by the main cooling fan (112), wherein the method (700) has the following method steps: determining and setting limit temperatures (T1, T2 to 720; T3 to 730; T4 to 740) which are assigned to the operating modes (720, 730, 740) with cooling being initiated when these are exceeded, determining the activated operating mode (720, 730, 740), determining whether in the first space (116) a temperature (EC) that is dependent on the activated operating mode exceeds the limit temperature (T1, T2; T3;
