After moving to a rental with a range of decidedly inferior quality than I was used to, I noted unsurprisingly that my baked goods took waaaay too long, often came out raw inside even after upping the bake time by 50% or more. That (and the initially disgusting state of my oven, which had never been cleaned apparently before someone ran a self-clean cycle—big no no) made me want to abandon baking altogether, for whatever didn’t fit in my far superior countertop compact toaster oven. But, you know, pandemic and all. My toaster oven is fantastic, but I did buy a compact one, so it limits my options for baking pans. And I really, really want to use up all the crazy pantry supplies I have picked up over time, many of which demand the oven. So, I looked for my old oven thermometer, a Taylor model, and realized I probably left it in my old oven when I moved. A quick web search turned up some options; I went for this one, believing it to be the same as my old one. It’s actually almost twice the diameter, good for aging eyes! It’s also more stable with its little hanging hook than the old one was (I kept knocking the old one over when I’d put in or remove pans, but this one so far has not been in the way—puzzling, since it’s bigger!)... and it is easy to read through the now clean (ish) oven door after seven rounds of scrubbing. What it told me was startling, but fit my suspicions. The oven took forever to come up to the set temp; actually, when it said it was done preheating, it was FIFTY degrees lower than what I had set!!! I mean, we all know ovens vary a little, but... that’s just ridiculous. I kept pushing up the set temp until the thermometer told me we were there. Interestingly, the oven does reach the set temp eventually; it just has to take a lot longer than it’s telling you to do so, resulting in spectacularly uneven heating through the bake. Without this little gem, I wouldn’t have known that. It’s not just the calibration, it’s the preheat cycle that’s messed up. So, basically, to bake with anything like a reasonable degree of certainty, I have to keep preheating for an extra twenty minutes or so—or just heat the oven hotter to start with, then turn it down. This was at the higher end of temps; I was shooting for 400, got 350, and had to go to 450 for the temp to be 400 when the preheat light went off and the oven beeped to say it was ready. But over time, it kept going up (while I was baking!!!), so I had to back down to 425. My dish came out fine, thankfully, but this tells me we’re not making anything fancy in here, for sure. I still have to see how the low temp works; I want to make meringue for pavlova, and I just don’t trust the oven. But I do trust this nifty little thermometer! It’s really making me change the way I use this crummy oven. If it were my appliance, I’d get it serviced or replaced, but since it’s a rental, that’s not going to happen. At least now I can hope for better results than I got for the first few months; as an experienced cook and baker, accuracy matters to me. I haven’t calibrated the dial itself to find out how accurate the thermometer is, but it seems to be correct based on how my baked goods are coming out now, in terms of time and bake quality, relative to before using the oven thermometer. Wish I had bought this thing months ago, when I first suspected oven sabotage. I held out hope of finding my old one, but at this price point, I really shouldn’t have. Buy it if you have any doubts about your oven. Or even if you don’t—it might surprise you. I just know that, when I move next time, I’m taking this thing with me!!!
