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> It's funny how often the cooks complain about the ovens not being accurate on the Bon Appetit YouTube channel. I wonder if it's more the cooks than it is the

by cr0sh 8y ago

> It's funny how often the cooks complain about the ovens not being accurate on the Bon Appetit YouTube channel. I wonder if it's more the cooks than it is the oven. My wife once worked at a shop where she had to prepare fresh-baked cookies from scratch, and their oven was often "on the glitch". The owner of the shop also owned a pizza place next door. So when the oven went on the fritz, she'd do what any self-sufficient cook would do, and borrow the commercial gas pizza oven next door. Now mind you - this was a commercial full-sized pizza oven, running at an insane temperature - well over 700 degrees. But it was a consistent temperature... ...so my wife would pop 'em in, wait an appropriate amount of time while also watching the cookies closely, then pull them out when they were properly cooked. They'd turn out perfectly every time. That isn't to say you could cook anything at that increased temperature - you can't. But there are many things you can do, if you know what the heck you're doing. Sometimes you gotta make due with the tools at your disposal, because you may not have a choice otherwise. Or at least try to do it. If things hadn't gone right with the cookies, in the trash they would've went - but it went so well, my wife started to learn how to use that pizza oven for all it was worth, because it was usually always at temperature and consistent.

wrdqex 8y ago
So let me get this straight: - The chefs on said youtube channel complain about the temperature being non-consistent on their ovens. - Your wife also ran into this problem with her oven. - Your wife was able to cook using a pizza oven, which did NOT display this problem. - Therefore, the chefs from the channel are bad chefs, worse than your wife. I have not watched this youtube channel and cannot comment on the skill of the chefs, but your comment's conclusion does not logically follow.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  I perhaps wasn't as clear as I wanted to be. The point I was trying to make was to use the tools you have at your disposal. My wife had access to a "flaky oven" (half the time it wouldn't turn on) - or she could use an oven that worked properly, albeit at a very high temperature that for many people, would burn the heck out of anything you put in it. In the case of the youtube channel - which I don't know about anything either - maybe, if the ovens didn't hold a proper temperature, they should have just cranked it to max temperature, not worried about what the temperature actually was - and just cooked with that? It would of course depend on what was being cooked; there's a world of difference between say, roasting some potatoes at high temperature, and baking a souffle or something delicate like that. You probably couldn't do the latter in a high temperature oven properly. But ultimately, most cooking is essentially controlled burning. If you can do that, you can cook many things. Not everything, but enough. Actual baking on the other hand - a lot of it involves accuracy and chemistry, and if you don't have control over the whole process, then the recipe will fail every time. If that were the case with that youtube channel (quite likely), then doing any kind of a "hack" with an oven probably won't work out well.

by cr0sh 8y ago

wrdqex 8y ago

So let me get this straight: - The chefs on said youtube channel complain about the temperature being non-consistent on their ovens. - Your wife also ran into this problem with her oven. - Your wife was able to cook using a pizza oven, which did NOT display this problem. - Therefore, the chefs from the channel are bad chefs, worse than your wife. I have not watched this youtube channel and cannot comment on the skill of the chefs, but your comment's conclusion does not logically follow.

cr0sh 8y ago
I perhaps wasn't as clear as I wanted to be. The point I was trying to make was to use the tools you have at your disposal. My wife had access to a "flaky oven" (half the time it wouldn't turn on) - or she could use an oven that worked properly, albeit at a very high temperature that for many people, would burn the heck out of anything you put in it. In the case of the youtube channel - which I don't know about anything either - maybe, if the ovens didn't hold a proper temperature, they should have just cranked it to max temperature, not worried about what the temperature actually was - and just cooked with that? It would of course depend on what was being cooked; there's a world of difference between say, roasting some potatoes at high temperature, and baking a souffle or something delicate like that. You probably couldn't do the latter in a high temperature oven properly. But ultimately, most cooking is essentially controlled burning. If you can do that, you can cook many things. Not everything, but enough. Actual baking on the other hand - a lot of it involves accuracy and chemistry, and if you don't have control over the whole process, then the recipe will fail every time. If that were the case with that youtube channel (quite likely), then doing any kind of a "hack" with an oven probably won't work out well.