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+-- Thread: Know your oven (/showthread.php?tid=105649)
Know your oven - labradors - 08-07-2010
Well, I was away from home yesterday and much of today, at the home/restaurant of some friends, introducing them to some bread baking since they had recently acquired a used, gas pizza oven and also wanted to use it for bread.
Since he had already been using the oven for pizza, I let him handle that while I showed his helper (a woman who cleans but also helps with some of the cooking tasks) what to do for the recipe my friend wanted to try as something to use for hamburger rolls.
The recipe called for the rolls to be baked at 375F for 15-20 minutes, but the rolls turned into charcoal in less than five minutes!
It turned out that my friend hadn't really paid attention to the oven temperature gauge when making pizza, and when he finally preheated the oven to 375, he was actually beyond the far end of the gauge (350), since the gauge was marked in CENTIGRADE! Thus, these rolls that were supposed to be baked at 375F had been incinerated at more than 660F!
So, we certainly had a good laugh about that and, when we tried a second batch, today, we made sure to have the oven only preheat to 190C on the gauge and the rolls turned out fine.
As far as the actual rolls were concerned, even though the cooked well and tasted good, we each agreed that the recipe he had chosen was not really right for hamburger rolls - great as dinner rolls, but not hamburger rolls. After further discussion, we agreed that something more like kaiser rolls would be better (especially since neither he nor I like those puffs of cotton usually sold as hamburger rolls).
Re: Know your oven - Harborwitch - 08-07-2010
Cracks me up!!! My first few attempts in the convection/microwave in the motorhome were like that. I made a batch of those cookies with the cream cheese and cookie dough - they burned from the inside out (baked on convection!) and they appeared to continue to burn for hours. Ugh!
Got it now.
Re: Know your oven - Roxanne 21 - 08-07-2010
Interesting---I have to deal with that conversion....my ovens are Centigrade so I have to convert from Farenheit all of the time. You would think that after 18 years I ould be able to do this on auto-pilot. The only one that is ready at hand is the 180 degrees---which is 350 for you guys.
I haven't had any major debacles yet BUT
Last year when Peter's sister was here for her very first visit to "Africa", I was whipping up a Beef Wellington and after the usual 20 minute in the oven thing Inoticed that the pastry was not doing its usual great job---did not think about it too much until my next dish (turkey dinner) was way too long in cooking---hmmm. YUPPP---problem with the thermostat. Of all times----the meal turned out great, just a bit later than I wanted.
I agree, Labs----we MUST know our oven and listen to it!
Your episode sounds as though it was a great deal of fun and laughter----how good is that with friends!!!
Re: Know your oven - Old Bay - 08-07-2010
That reminds me of the time Jane and a friend drove to Houston in our new car--she was going 70 and people were passing right and left--she said "I can't believe these people are going so fast!! All of them!!". Then she realized the speedometer was set on km/hr--never seen that before. The metric system was something she never used.
Re: Know your oven - DFen911 - 08-08-2010
All you can do is laugh and shake your head. Sounds like you did some great adapting. Does their oven have a big ceramic deck?
Re: Know your oven - labradors - 08-08-2010
Yes, Denise. It's two (or maybe four - it's hard to see toward the back) big tiles that are two inches thick. The gas elements are underneath the tiles, and inside the top of the oven there is an electric broiling element (that he isn't using).
Re: Know your oven - cjs - 08-08-2010
A similar pizza oven with two shelves is all I had for an oven at the 1860s hotel I used to cook...
