Is Your Oven Quirky? Ten Common Cooking/Baking Mistakes

I came across this helpful list of common cooking mistakes. Here’s one of the ten tips that you might find useful from CookingLight.com:

8. You don’t know your oven’s quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Result: Food cooks too fast, too slow, or unevenly.

Ideally, every oven set to 350° would heat to 350°. But many ovens don’t, including expensive ones, and some change their behavior as they age. Always use an oven thermometer. Next, be aware of hot spots. If you’ve produced cake layers with wavy rather than flat tops, hot spots are the problem.

SaBrina Bone, who tests in our kitchen, advises the “bread test:” Arrange bread slices to cover the middle oven rack. Bake at 350° for a few minutes, and see which slices get singed―their location marks your oven’s hot spot(s). If you know you have a hot spot in, say, the back left corner, avoid putting pans in that location, or rotate accordingly.

Burnt Cake (not made by me)

I also love #9: “You’re too casual about measuring ingredients.”

The most telling and age-old schism between cooks and bakers… the reason I would rather see 1/8 tsp salt than “a pinch of salt” in a recipe:  I am a measurer when I bake!  Recipes are written after laborious testing and should be followed at least the first time through.  Then you can start subbing and playing around.  But the audacity of tinkering with a great recipe because you’re too lazy to knife the top of that cup of flour!  Audacity may be too strong a word- but ingredients aren’t all created equal.  Cardamom is so not cinnamon.  For my own taste (not when baking for others) I almost can’t go wrong with nearly adding 50% more cinnamon than listed (semi-blasphemy to my above tirade).  However, often, haphazardly tossing in more ginger or salt or eyeballing whatever just results in gross food.

Man of Science, Man of Faith

Cups and tablespoons exist for a reason.  Call me a control freak.

(But if ever you are snowed in on a sugary mountain during Aquarius season, kitchen sink nachos are totally improvisable and hard to mess up. Wish I’d taken a picture.)

Baking is about precision.  Cooking is fun and creative, but baking is chemistry… is science.  Remember the Lost episode from Season 2, Man of Science, Man of Faith?

I propose that baking is to cooking as John Locke is to Jack Shepherd.

I do love both cooking and baking.  But everyone knows: I am such a baker and I am the Jack like Romy is the Mary, Michele is the Rhoda!

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