Preheat oven
Necessary or superfluous? How bad is baking without preheating?
Preheat or not? Often a critical question, even when baking pizza.
Heated debates continue to flare up about whether an oven really needs to be preheated. There has been a very clear answer for a long time.
Whether baking mix, frozen pizza or freshly cut Christmas cookies: With every baking instruction we stumble upon the phrase "preheat the oven …". And then we dutifully do exactly that and don't even bring the tray 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?
Do not preheat oven and other problems
Like everything in the kitchen, the question of preheating is of course constantly being discussed anew. But before you worry about the correct temperature, there are many other pitfalls you can fall into while baking:
- Estimate ingredients: When cooking, you can work well with quantities such as "a pinch". But chemistry is required when baking – and if you don't measure the ingredients exactly, but just throw your thumbs into the bowl, the result will quickly be a disaster.
- Inaccurate measurement: This happens quickly with recipes in which the quantities are not given in grams but in "tablespoon", "teaspoon" or "cup" (for example in English-language baking recipes). For example, if you simply tip flour into your measuring cup, you are also mixing in a lot of air, which distorts the filling quantity. Therefore: Always tap the measuring container well and fill it exactly to the brim!
- Everything in butter? Too bad that butter straight out of the fridge is so hard. Many of us, just do it quickly in the microwave hot, or even melt. After all, everything is mixed in the dough afterwards and melts in the oven – right? Unfortunately, no! It really makes a big difference whether the recipe uses "cold", "soft" or "melted" butter – otherwise you will end up with completely unusable batter.
Preheating the oven – the clear answer
Not preheating the oven is actually NOT the dramatic mistake we believe it to be, contrary to the points above. It's okay if you just put the baking tray in the cold oven and let it get hot – provided you have a few things in mind. In the video you can see what to look out for!