not worth the savings in time.
Q How long does it take to preheat an oven?
A The time it takes to preheat an oven will vary depending on your particular oven, how efficiently it heats, and how well it holds the heat. If it were only a question of reaching the desired temperature for baking a cake or a batch of cookies, I would advise you to turn on your oven before beginning to assemble your ingredients, as most recipes direct, resting assured that in the 15 to 20 minutes minimum that it would take you to prepare your batter or dough, your oven would be preheated. But now that many of us have a growing desire to save energy, I’ve started to think of preheating in terms not only of getting ready to bake, but also in terms of using the least amount of energy necessary for a successful outcome.
Some environmental advocates have suggested that it isn’t worth the energy to preheat an oven, since opening the oven door causes it to lose so much heat. They argue that while putting food in a cold oven will add a few minutes to cooking time, the savings in energy over the long run will be well worth the time lost.
I am more persuaded, however, by studies showing that it takes more energy to get an oven up to temperature when it is cold than to return it to preheated temperature once it has already been heated. Casual experiments with my own oven have convinced me of this. According to the thermometer that hangs inside my oven, it takes my Thermador about 12 minutes to reach 350°F (180°C). After opening the oven for 30seconds and closing the oven door, it takes only 3 or 4 minutes for the temperature to rise again to 350°F (180°C).
Furthermore, many baked items rely on contact with an initial blast of hot air to jump-start the process. While starting off in a cold oven may make sense when you are making baked beans, or in other cases where baking is simply a method for reaching a desired temperature that indicates doneness, with baked goods it is a different story. Bread dough won’t have any “oven spring” (see page 343 ) if it is placed in a cold oven; the baking powder in biscuits would lose its power if the biscuits didn’t immediately start to bake. If you are interested in energy efficiency, get to know your oven and how quickly it heats up. Then figure out at what point in the recipe you will need to turn it on so it is just hot enough at the moment you are ready to bake.
One suggestion for saving energy that may make more sense for bakers than starting with a cold oven is to turn off the heat without opening the oven door 5 or 10 minutes before baking is done. Most newer ovens will stay hot for at least this long, baking with residual heat. If this idea appeals to you, test your oven’s ability to hold onto its heat by placing an oven thermometer inside, preheating the oven, turning off the heat, and checking the temperature after 5 or 10 minutes to see whether or not there has been a significant drop.
Cold-Oven Coffee Cake
Traditionally, cold-oven cake recipes were developed to save money on fuel. Why have the oven on, the reasoning goes, when there’s nothing baking in it? It turns out that there are other reasons to start certain cakes in a cold oven. Doing so with a pound cake results in a wonderfully high rise (cakes have a longer time to rise before they set in an oven that starts cool) and a pleasantly chewy crust (a hotter oven will evaporate moisture on the surface of the cake before it has time to interact with starch, forming a crust).
In the following recipe, starting this very simple yeasted coffee cake in a cold oven allows the rapid-rise yeast, which needs only one rise, to actually ferment in the oven rather than during a separate rise on the countertop. Putting the cake in a hot oven would kill off the yeast in a matter of minutes, but starting it in a cold oven, where the temperature rises gradually, actually helps the dough rise at a faster rate than it would on the countertop in a cool
Q How long does it take to preheat an oven?
A The time it takes to preheat an oven will vary depending on your particular oven, how efficiently it heats, and how well it holds the heat. If it were only a question of reaching the desired temperature for baking a cake or a batch of cookies, I would advise you to turn on your oven before beginning to assemble your ingredients, as most recipes direct, resting assured that in the 15 to 20 minutes minimum that it would take you to prepare your batter or dough, your oven would be preheated. But now that many of us have a growing desire to save energy, I’ve started to think of preheating in terms not only of getting ready to bake, but also in terms of using the least amount of energy necessary for a successful outcome.
Some environmental advocates have suggested that it isn’t worth the energy to preheat an oven, since opening the oven door causes it to lose so much heat. They argue that while putting food in a cold oven will add a few minutes to cooking time, the savings in energy over the long run will be well worth the time lost.
I am more persuaded, however, by studies showing that it takes more energy to get an oven up to temperature when it is cold than to return it to preheated temperature once it has already been heated. Casual experiments with my own oven have convinced me of this. According to the thermometer that hangs inside my oven, it takes my Thermador about 12 minutes to reach 350°F (180°C). After opening the oven for 30seconds and closing the oven door, it takes only 3 or 4 minutes for the temperature to rise again to 350°F (180°C).
Furthermore, many baked items rely on contact with an initial blast of hot air to jump-start the process. While starting off in a cold oven may make sense when you are making baked beans, or in other cases where baking is simply a method for reaching a desired temperature that indicates doneness, with baked goods it is a different story. Bread dough won’t have any “oven spring” (see page 343 ) if it is placed in a cold oven; the baking powder in biscuits would lose its power if the biscuits didn’t immediately start to bake. If you are interested in energy efficiency, get to know your oven and how quickly it heats up. Then figure out at what point in the recipe you will need to turn it on so it is just hot enough at the moment you are ready to bake.
One suggestion for saving energy that may make more sense for bakers than starting with a cold oven is to turn off the heat without opening the oven door 5 or 10 minutes before baking is done. Most newer ovens will stay hot for at least this long, baking with residual heat. If this idea appeals to you, test your oven’s ability to hold onto its heat by placing an oven thermometer inside, preheating the oven, turning off the heat, and checking the temperature after 5 or 10 minutes to see whether or not there has been a significant drop.
Cold-Oven Coffee Cake
Traditionally, cold-oven cake recipes were developed to save money on fuel. Why have the oven on, the reasoning goes, when there’s nothing baking in it? It turns out that there are other reasons to start certain cakes in a cold oven. Doing so with a pound cake results in a wonderfully high rise (cakes have a longer time to rise before they set in an oven that starts cool) and a pleasantly chewy crust (a hotter oven will evaporate moisture on the surface of the cake before it has time to interact with starch, forming a crust).
In the following recipe, starting this very simple yeasted coffee cake in a cold oven allows the rapid-rise yeast, which needs only one rise, to actually ferment in the oven rather than during a separate rise on the countertop. Putting the cake in a hot oven would kill off the yeast in a matter of minutes, but starting it in a cold oven, where the temperature rises gradually, actually helps the dough rise at a faster rate than it would on the countertop in a cool
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