Oven Temperatures

It is more important to know your oven—to understand its faults and its eccentricities—than to blindly respect the instructions of cookbooks concerning precise thermostatic regulations. Electric ovens act differently from gas ovens. Thermostats are not always accurate. Ovens in professional kitchens are usually kept at a higher temperature than that recommended for most preparations in cookbooks (say, at a guess, 425°) and nearly everything is cooked at that same temperature (the bakery ovens are a different matter). Those that are heated by a system of hot air circulation around the outside of the oven cavity can cook at higher temperatures than those that receive heat from a direct source. Throughout the preparation of this book I have kept two American thermometers in the oven and, inasmuch as they agree, I believe them to be accurate. But I know from experience that, when working with ovens in friends’ kitchens, I must usually work with lower temperatures than at home. Oven temperatures here have often been altered in view of this experience.