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| NEW STOVE |
Almost ten years ago, I blogged HERE about getting a new stove after the oven in the old one had died. I was excited at the time because the new oven seemed to bake things much more quickly than the old one had done. Well, over the years I came to realize that there was a big problem with the new oven.
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| OLD STOVE |
Apparently, our landlord bought the cheapest stove he could find and it was likely a "scratch and dent" one. I did notice one large dent in a place that didn't really matter but it took some burnt food before I realized the extent of the damage. I bought an oven thermometer a few months ago and discovered that the oven temperature is off by over 100 degrees! For all these years, I could only guess where to set the dial and how long to bake things. It was extremely frustrating and I dreaded having to use the oven.
Determined to figure out where the various temperatures actually were on the dial, I spent a day figuring that out by setting the oven to each of the main settings and recorded what the actual temperature was for each of them. In the process, I discovered that the problem is even stranger than I thought, as you can see in the photo below of the dial. 300 and 325 degrees are actually well below the 200 degree mark and 350 degrees is off by 125 degrees compared to the dial!
As I progressed around the dial, jotting down the actual temperatures, the temperature difference gradually started decreasing. It eventually reached a point, somewhere between the 400 and 450 degree marks, where the oven was actually the correct temperature. After that point, it turns out that the oven doesn't get as hot as it is supposed to. In fact, it was a struggle getting it to go up to 500 degrees even after preheating it for over 20 minutes. The broiler works fine, by the way.
Each of the temperatures on the round stickers corresponds to one of the main markings on the stove dial even if they aren't lined up perfectly. I did place the 350 degree sticker in between though because I needed to know exactly where that one was since it's the most common setting. The little line on the 350° sticker is showing that the setting is on the smaller dot that is between 200° and 250° marks.
Baking is so much less stressful since I applied the stickers and I haven't had any more trouble with burning food in the oven.
