Spent 6 months baking with a cheap oven thermometer and it ruined my bread game

Moved into a new place last fall in Austin and the oven seemed fine. My loaves were coming out dense and pale crusts. Thought it was my starter or my technique. Finally borrowed my neighbor's ThermoWorks temp gun. Turns out my oven was running 50 degrees cold the whole time. All those hours of trying to fix my recipe for nothing. Got a real thermometer and now my crumb is night and day. Anyone else deal with a secretly broken oven that wasted their time?

3 comments

3 Comments

robert_bell23d ago

Ask if you ever checked if your oven's thermostat was actually adjustable. Some ovens have a hidden calibration screw in the dial or behind the digital panel that lets you tweak it without buying anything extra. I had a similar issue with a rental oven in Chicago, and after I found the calibration trick, it was a total game changer. Did you look up your oven's manual to see if that's an option?

tylerj2223d agoMost Upvoted

Grab a cheap oven thermometer from the hardware store and stuck it right on the middle rack. Dialed the oven temp up 50 degrees to match what the recipe said. Fixed everything overnight - got that golden brown crust and the crumb opened right up. Did you try calibrating your oven's internal thermostat before buying a separate thermometer?

jana_hart1823d ago

Ended up skipping the whole calibration thing and just moved the racks around instead. Lower rack gave me way better color without having to mess with the temperature at all.