Calibrate Your Oven

Before you begin baking, check your oven and make sure it’s calibrated properly. You can do everything in these recipes correctly but if your oven is off you are going to feel like a really crappy baker. When we were doing Saturday Morning Breakfast at Rustic Canyon we had awful ovens. They were lopsided, the temperatures were inaccurate, and the pilots went out all the time, always at the worst possible moment. I would do everything as close to perfect as I could but I still wound up with burnt, lopsided, underbaked, or overbaked muffins without the right color on top. It was rough. At Rustic Canyon, I dealt with this by choosing a wall in the kitchen and hurling the crappy muffins at it, which is not something I recommend. But I had to figure out how to get out my aggression and move on, and that was my way. So unless you want to decorate one of the walls in your home with muffins, I suggest you check your oven with a basic oven thermometer at both 350°F/175°C and 500°F/260°C.