Baking 101: Getting to Know Your Oven

If you are about to embark on your baking journey, there is one basic thing that you need to nail down before attempting to create a delish masterpiece to devour:

"Know Thy Oven"

The success of every baking session is at the mercy of this temperemental piece of machinery. You should know its quirks as to how to control its temperature and balancing out heat across baked goods. Once you have mastered this one, it can be your partner and a friend helping you elevate to the next level.

So how to tame the beast? Here are some pointers:

1. Get an oven thermometer. Not one but two.
   Yes you heard me. Two! One that mounts on the wall and one that can be attached or placed in the middle of the oven. Why? For horribly small ovens, those hanging thermometers will not work. So I recommend CDN Oven thermometer that comes with a magnet that you can attach to the side of the wall.
   Then the other one you can place in the middle of the oven where you want to put your bakes. This is to gauge if your oven has reached preheat temp range. The temp on the mounted thermometer maybe different than the middle section thus you need to have at least two. Then remove the second one and use the mounted thermometer to guesstimate how your oven thermostat is fluctuating during baking.
2. Do a test run at least once
   Turn on the oven and set to the maximum possible thermostat available in your dial then observe. Once it hits max temp, you dial down lower and see how fast the temp changes to the setting indicated. This helps you to manage your oven's behaviour for those recipes that requires change of temp in between bakes. This is also a good indicator on how far your oven can go for max temp.
3. Bake cookies
   Baking cookies will give you a good indication on the heat spots in your oven. Heat spots are areas in your oven that is hotter than your thermostat setting, thus gives an uneven browning. You can also try switching around your baking tray to see if it evens out the browning and make a mental note to do that in every bake. Some bakers would avoid heat spots to prevent over browning.
4. Make a sponge/chiffon cake
   Nothing is more fragile than making a sponge/chiffon cake. Sudden fluctuations in the oven thermostat and it can send your cake to failville. Making this will give you a good indication on how stable is your oven thermostat. I once had an oven where I made chiffon cakes and 2 out of 3 cakes will sink like the titanic. Later on, I realised that my oven's thermostat is unstable that cause my cakes to sink. So I took the executive decision to change my oven and I have been successful eversince.

I hope these tips help you understand your oven more and become successful in your baking endeavors.