Preheat oven
Necessary or superfluous? How bad is baking without preheating?
Preheat, right? This is often a critical question, even when it comes to baking pizza.
Again and again, heated debates break out about whether an oven really needs to be preheated. There has been a very clear answer for a long time.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a baking mix, frozen pizza or freshly cut Christmas cookies: With every baking instruction we stumble over the phrase “Preheat the oven to …”. And we usually dutifully do just that and don’t even bring the sheet near the oven until the prescribed temperature has actually been reached.
But: is that really necessary? Or couldn’t we actually save ourselves the long preheating time?
Oven not preheating and other problems
Like everything else in the kitchen, the question of preheating is of course always a topic of discussion. But before you worry about the correct temperature, there are many other pitfalls you can fall into when baking:
- Estimate ingredients: When cooking, you can work with quantities such as “a pinch”. But when baking, chemistry is required – and if you don’t measure the ingredients exactly, but just throw your thumbs in the bowl, the result will quickly become a disaster.
- Inaccurate measurement: This happens quickly with recipes in which the quantities are not given in grams but in “tablespoon”, “teaspoon” or “cup” (e.g. in English baking recipes). For example, if you simply pour flour into your measuring cup, you will also mix in a lot of air, which will falsify the filling quantity. Therefore: Always tap the measuring container well and really fill it right up to the brim!
- Everything in butter? It sucks that butter straight out of the fridge is so hard. Many of us, just make them fast in the microwave hot or even melt. After all, everything is mixed in the dough afterwards anyway and melts in the oven – right? Unfortunately, no! It really makes a big difference if the recipe calls for “cold”, “soft” or “melted” butter – otherwise you’ll end up with a completely useless batter later.
Preheat the oven – the clear answer
The oven actually not preheating is NOT the dramatic mistake we think it is, contrary to the points above. It’s perfectly fine to just pop the baking sheet into the cold oven and let it heat up – as long as you keep a few things in mind. In the video you can see what to look out for!
Reading tip: Have you ever wondered what all the oven symbols stand for? Here are answers!