Square DOT with cornbreads

Hungry for More?

2 Comments

  1. Hmm– Accuracy is nice, but precision is better. (see this picture to illustrate the difference ) I don’t much care about the actual temperature, but I really want it to be the same every time I set the dial to “350”. After several thousand meals cooked I’m pretty aware that for most recipes I need to set the oven 25+ degrees higher than a recipe states unless I put the item in the lower left corner in which case I want the dial to be a little below what the recipe asks for.

    Unfortunately for most internet sourced recipes one has now idea how or whether the writer’s oven was calibrated (this site excepted, I’m sure) so the stated temp can at best be taken as a suggested starting point. Most importantly you need to pay attention both during the cooking process to try to avoid disasters (not always successful to adjust on the fly, especially in baking), and between repetitions of a recipe to get things to ultimately work well.

    That said, I’d love to have both accuracy and precision in my oven. Is there a probe that can be used with my ChefAlarm to make oven temp measurements? How about a recommended measurement protocol– how many repetitions in how many different oven position? No oven I’ve ever used (well barring a _very_ expensive one in the lab) was uniform through its volume. Day-to-day variation is what scares me the most, but what about extreme swings during cycling of the heat? The time averaged temp may be fine, but a spike might really toast your soufflé.

    1. That is a very true and very thoughtful comment, thanks for that! First, yes, you can use the optional air probe for ChefAlarm to do a manual average, which will also tell you the peaks and troughs. Instructions for that process are found here: https://blog.thermoworks.com/thermal-secrets-oven-calibration/. Also we had someone work up a thermal model of OUR oven that you can see here: https://blog.thermoworks.com/oven-monitoring/. I think you’ll find it very interesting! The truth is that ovens are weird, weird beasts. They may be 25°F off at one temp, 50°F at a higher temp. They have hot and cold spots, they cycle in odd ways. Using real tools to make sense of it really is the best move!

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