1,607 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies that are necessary for its operation.
By continuing to browse, you agree to their use (learn more...).

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others.

Here is some information on its structure and operation.

36 K 4.4/5 (17 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Oven Cooking Temperature Use Tips

Last modified on: May 16^th 2020

For this post Comments Lasts posts Follow

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

What is an oven?

It is a cooking method, as old as cooking, which consists in cooking food without direct contact with the heat source (as on a stove for example), but in a closed and heated enclosure.

How does it work?

We are talking here about an electric oven, they are made of a square steel enclosure, thermally insulated, which closes with a tight door, often glazed.

four voute et sole

The top of the oven is called "the vault" ("voute" in french), the bottom "the sole".

There is an electric resistance under the roof (often visible) and another one under the bottom (invisible), these two resistances when they receive electric current transform it into heat, it is what makes your oven heat up.

Normally one use the 2 resistors, to heat on the top and the bottom, but sometimes we need to heat only on the top, to make gratin, it is called the "grill" position, and in this case only the top resistor is heated and often at maximum power.

Here is the general principle: a closed and insulated enclosure, and 2 heating elements to heat the inside.

Improvements

four ventilateur chaleur tournante

Associated with all that has just been said, there is also a notion of "rotating heat", that is to say a fan inside the oven that mixes the air inside. The advantage of this option is that the heat is better distributed in the oven, and the preheating time (or temperature rise) is reduced.

More recently, there is also "pulsed heat", in this system the internal fan, which is always present, has its own heating resistor which delivers heated air, instead of stirring the air in the oven. Preheating and baking time is further reduced.

Lighting

ovens are lit, more or less well, and in the basic version, it's a simple small incandescent bulb (like a fridge lamp) that lights up the interior rather poorly. We have to admit that the lighting is rather average.

The first improvement is that the lighting moves towards the vault, and is transformed with a halogen bulb. It's much more efficient.

The next improvement will see ovens equipped with leds, giving a powerful and regular light. This is already available at the time of writing (May 2020), but for the moment only in the higher end ovens.

The position in the oven

four niveaux de hauteur

All ovens allow you to put several racks to put dishes to be cooked, or to be able to place a rack where you want in height in the oven, from "bottom" (close to the bottom, "bas" in french) to "top" (close to the roof, "haut" in french) passing "half-height" (in the middle, "mi-hauteur" in french).

This position allows you to adjust a little where you want the heat to have the most effect:
- To put at the bottom, means that we want to insist on the bottom of the dish to cook it more (example a pie)
- Putting it on the top means that you want to put more heat on the top of the dish to cook it more (example a gratin)
- Putting it in the middle means that you want the dish to be cooked in a classic way, without any particularities.

What to choose?

There are many possibilities: rotating heat or not, position in the oven, temperature...

Don't worry, with cooking-ez.com it's simple: if a special oven configuration is needed for a recipe it will be expressly indicated. And if not, always opt for "rotating heat" (if you have it) and position of the rack "halfway up".

Lasts posts

Season to the right level

When you need to salt something—for example, fish fillets before cooking them—you’ll naturally sprinkle them with a pinch of salt using your fingers. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this very ordinary gesture, which is done all the time in the kitchen, and yet there’s a...
October 14^th 2026813

How to Properly Fill a Jar

When you have a jar in your kitchen that’s almost empty—flour or almond flour, for example—you’ll probably refill it before it’s completely empty. And that’s a great way to go about it—no one wants to run out of an ingredient right in the middle of a recipe. Once you’ve...
October 2^nd 20268505

Serving Temperature for Wine

When it comes to serving wine, you may (like me) have a fairly simple rule of thumb: red wine at room temperature, and white, rosé, and yellow wines in the fridge until it’s time to serve them. It’s very easy to remember, but it’s a bit simplistic, and you’ll see that there’s a much...
September 23^th 20269645

Hot Emulsified Sauces

In French cuisine, sauces are a very important part of a recipe—not just a side dish. In fact, they’re so important that, especially since the time of Auguste Escoffier, they’ve been classified into categories. And among these categories are “hot emulsified sauces,” or lukewarm ones. ...
September 9^th 20261,3835

Hot Dishes and Cold Dishes

When plating or serving a dish—whether hot or cold—on a plate, it’s very important to make sure they’re both the right temperature; in other words: if the dish is hot, the plate should be hot, and conversely, if the dish is cold, the plate should be cold. Is this really important? Let’s...
September 2^nd 20261,1143

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other articles you might also like

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20259,9585

The beautiful story of the croissants

As you may have already noticed, cooking, baking and pastry-making are full of stories or legends, usually very romantic, about this or that product or recipe. This is often the case for named recipes, for example tarte tatin, peach melba, paris-brest and many others, but it also applies to very...
October 10^th 201822 K5

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie? You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary...
March 20^th 202070 K4.3

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202142 K4.4

The color of the bread crumb

When you go to buy bread, at your baker's, at the time of the choice, if you hesitate of course, you will undoubtedly be very sensitive to the color of the crust, and you will be right. The color of the crust, from golden, to sometimes very dark, deep brown almost black, depending on the maturity...
April 30^th 202224 K4.6