An Unexpected Twist

I cooked in someone else’s kitchen last night. Nothing earth shattering in that news, but it was more difficult than I expected. No, the concept of the silverware drawer being to the right of the stove rather than the left wasn’t the strange part. It was the electric cook top and an excellent electric oven. The cook top was tough to adjust to the appropriate temperature, so I had to keep checking the paella rice to see whether it was cooked. And the surface was tempered glass, so I had to lift the pan to see where the heating element was, and how red it was getting. I just couldn’t figure that one out. The oven was a different story. It was correctly calibrated and consistent, so the recipe for molten chocolate cakes, which I thought was flawed, was actually correct. It really does take only 15 minutes to bake! At least if you are using an accurate oven.

So now I have oven envy, and cook top pride.

8 Replies to “An Unexpected Twist”

  1. you can have my new electric oven. i spent over a year trying to perfect neapolitan-style pizza with my old gas oven, and was finally getting comfortable with it. this electric oven is for the birds. or the bakers. anyone but the pizza makers.

  2. So how was the pizza in your old oven? Just give it a while with the new one. Yours is a noble pursuit, and one that should not be given up. The only advantage is that the temperature, at least in a good electric oven, can be very consistent and accurate. I have no idea why that is important, but it sounds good.

  3. the old oven was gas, and got considerably hotter, especially on the bottom, where the flame was. a pizza stone on the bottom would get up to over 600 degrees. a pizza stone in the electric will not get over the oven’s max, which is 550, and even that takes quite some time because there’s no intense heat source like flame spewing out.additionally, i was able to leverage the broiler (flame) on top of the oven for a blast of heat when needed. all of this adds up to higher heat and a more dynamic environment. great for cooking pizza, not so good for baking cookies i’d think. although, iamnotabaker.but i haven’t given up. i’ll just have to come up with a new approach, and i don’t have much faith given the lack of high temperatures to play with.and my cooktop thinks it’s not lit, and clicks all the time, which isn’t making me happy. perhaps i can give back all of the new shiny stuff and get back my old crappy stuff, which actually worked.

  4. it does, but i’m not going to futz around with that. i toyed with the idea of snipping the mechanism on the old oven before we tossed it, but couldn’t be bothered.frankly i don’t want to get involved in any liability issues in the event that something went wrong and a fire broke out. it would be quite a kick in the ass to have your homeowners insurance say “you did what?!?!” and kick out your claim. i don’t even want to think about it. 🙂

  5. My thought exactly. And I’ll tell you how to get the oven open when its in the cleaning cycle! Switch off the circuit breaker. I had a Thanksgiving disaster once when a very funny guest decided to see what happened when the cleaning cycle was turned on. I sent him with my father to a farm stand that sold pies about 30 miles away. Then put the turkey in the oven.

  6. Well then, your only option is to build a pizza oven. There is a good model at A Mano. I’m sure it won’t be too expensive. No more than $5000. And that is if you build it in the backyard. If you put it inside? Who knows? I still like the idea of bypassing the cleaning cycle locks. Lawyers be damned!

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