On Feb 14, 9:05*pm, Van wrote:
On Feb 14, 10:55*am, Art Todesco wrote:



On 2/14/2011 12:41 AM, Smitty Two wrote:

In article
,
* *wrote:

On Feb 13, 11:27 pm, *wrote:
I mean the average residential oven. *I've never seen one with a temp
gauge. *Is it because the oven manufacturers don't want you to know
how inaccurate their ovens are compared with the setting on the knob?

My Mom's electric stove has both a readout for the "set" temperature
and the actual temperature, at least while the oven is heating up. In
other words, you spin the knob to set the digital readout to 350 and
you can watch a smaller number in the corner of the display climb
towards 350.

To be honest, I don't recall if the "actual" temperature readout
varies during the cooking and since she lives 300 miles away, I can't
check tonight. :-)

My gas oven has a readout only for what it's set for. It reads "Pre"
while it's warming up, but when it reaches the set point it beeps and
displays the set point until the oven is turned off.

My 2 yr. old Bosch gas range displays the so-called actual temp during
oven warmup also, but I don't think it's accurate. After warmup, that
display goes out and all I see is the setpoint. Obviously the temp in an
oven is being monitored, but if the monitoring device isn't accurate
then it isn't accurate. I'm pretty sure mine is ~20 degrees F low.

Excursions from setpoint aren't that important to me; there has to be
some hysteresis built into the control algorithm and I trust the
engineers on that count.

My guess is the don't want you to know how much it varies. *My last
oven was a Dacor piece of junk. *It varied all over the place. *When
I contacted the factory, the person repeatedly read the line,
"Industry standard for residential oven is that it can vary by 25
degrees" ... not saying if it + or - 25 or a range of 25. *I later
got the answer that it was a range of 25. *I did extensive testing
and found that its range was about 35 or 40 degrees. *The authorized
service people couldn't make it better. *I gave up and lived with
the stupid thing. *40 degrees is no problem for a big roast or
something like that, but for a cookie or something that small, it is
far to iffy. *If you put it in at the top of the range, the cookie
will likely be over crisp ... at the bottom of the range, it will
not cook in the allotted time. *About 8 years after that, I called
the company and asked if they had ever fixed their problems. *They
offered a new control panel for free, but I would have to pay to
have it installed and no, I couldn't do it myself. *I bit, it was
about 50% better. *BTW, this oven had no temperature reading other
than the set temp. *A bit to their defense, it is hard to hold the
temp tight, especially when one side of the cube keeps being opened
and of course, you don't want overshoot for a red hot cal rod. *But,
I think they could do better. *My present new Whirlpool has just as
many dumb "features" designed in. *For instance, when broiling, if
you open the door, the upper cal rod shuts down. *And then it takes
forever to get cherry red again. *It also shuts down at 500 degrees.
* How do you broil in an "oven" at 500 degrees? *And you can't leave
the door open. *My old Dacor recommended broiling with the door
open. *For the few times I use the Whirlpool for top brown broiling
( use a gas grill for hunks of meat), I leave the door open and put
a magnet on the latch to trick it into leaving the power on. *That
works for me. *Sorry for the rant and partial hijack of the "Subject"..

This confirms what I suspected about the inaccurate temps. *At work we
have big industrial ovens for baking electronics and there are strong
fans that circulate the air inside. *The temp never wavers more than a
degree, if that (until we open the door). *Residential ovens would
probably need fans to achieve the same accuracy but that would be more
expense and noise.

"Residential ovens would probably need fans to achieve the same
accuracy but that would be more expense and noise."

They call them "convection ovens" and they are readily available in
the consumer market in styles that range from toaster ovens to full
ranges.

Google convection ovens