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How to tell my oven's temperature?

Nancy Reading

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I do all my baking on a range fired cooker and I think the door thermometer is broken. I'm sure there is a way of telling the temperature without a thermometer, good enough for most cooking purposes anyway. Does anyone have a quick and easy way to tell if the temperature is 400F or 300F?

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Matt McSpadden

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Hi Nancy,
Of course my first thought was to get another thermometer... but since you want to make this more difficult... :)

We used to put drops of water on the griddle or top of the wood stove... but that is not very scientific it just says its hot enough to boil water.

Another method I did not know about is that white sugar apparently melts around 368F. So if you put a small amount of sugar in a dish and put it in and it melts... you are hotter than 368. If it does not melt, you are below that temp.

Not sure if that would help.

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Rebecca Norman

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I use a simple analog over thermometer that is made with a coil of metal inside. You do have to open the door to see it, and they might not be very accurate but I assume that if I get used to how things bake at the temperatures mine reads, I learn how to adjust the heat.

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Judith Browning

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I don't know any really accurate ways other than a thermometer although, for me, back when I spent years cooking on a woodstove (a small, leaky Daisy Washington) I used my hand to gauge oven temps.
I wasn't baking anything that needed precise temperatures, just 'hot enough' and 'super hot' and 'whoops that's too hot'.

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Anne Miller

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The method that Matt mentioned using sugar is the method I was taught in school many years ago.

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Nancy Reading

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Thanks for the tips.

Yes I probably will get another thermometer at some stage - it never was accurate (under-reading), as Rebecca says you get used to converting it after a while, but it barely gets into the 'moderate' now even if the oven is smoking hot.

368 F is actually a very useful temperature, as that is a normal baking temperature for most cakes (about 180C) so thanks for that tip, Matt. I'm sure I've read somewhere about putting flour on a baking sheet and timing how long it takes to brown - I'll have to go through some of my old books to find it, but the sugar tip should make things less exciting for me in the meantime. (We don't like too much excitement sometimes!).

I wonder if that being the temperature for cake baking is significant....

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Burra Maluca

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If it was me, I think I'd use it as an excuse to cook lots of pizza. Purely for testing purposes...

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K Kaba

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Oil smoking points can be used for some of this too. Most of them smoke in the 400F and up range, but there's a couple that smoke lower. Butter is around 300F, coconut around 350F, lard and unrefined olive oil about 375F.

Jane Mulberry

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“Set a pan sprinkled with flour in the oven and if it becomes a delicate brown in five minutes, the oven is slow (250-350). If the flour turns to a medium golden brown in five minutes, the oven is moderate (350-400). If the flour turns a deep, dark brown in five minutes, the oven is hot (400 to 450).” Found here: https://www.moosejawtoday.com/opinion/flour-determines-temperature-of-ovens-1770000

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Nancy Reading

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Jane Mulberry wrote:“Set a pan sprinkled with flour in the oven and if it becomes a delicate brown in five minutes, the oven is slow (250-350). If the flour turns to a medium golden brown in five minutes, the oven is moderate (350-400). If the flour turns a deep, dark brown in five minutes, the oven is hot (400 to 450).” Found here: https://www.moosejawtoday.com/opinion/flour-determines-temperature-of-ovens-1770000

Ah - that's what I thought I was remembering - I'll need to get the feel for delicate and medium golden browns though :) The smoking oils may be easier to master.

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Jane Mulberry

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I think the "delicate brown" is probably more beige! But yes, oil smoking points are likely to be more accurate. You just need to decide on which oil to test with for whatever you're cooking.

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T Melville

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Cookies!

It use to be that a baker would put a bit of batter from a cake into the oven to test if the oven was hot enough yet. Before electric and gas ovens were invented, ovens were wood or coal burning. These could be temperamental and the temperature could be hard to regulate. Testing the oven before putting your baked goods in to cook was a necessity. These little bits of batter were “test cakes”. Later they became known as cookies from the Dutch word “koekje ” or koekie.

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