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Kitchen Notes: Oven Temperatures
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Cooking For Engineers



Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 16776765

PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:50 pm    Post subject: Kitchen Notes: Oven Temperatures Reply with quote


Article Digest:
These days we get recipes from all over the world -- through the internet, satellite television, pen pals, family, and other global sources of culinary goodness. Unfortunately, we're not all using the same system to depict oven temperatures. Here are cheat sheets to help decipher your recipes into your units of preference.

Fahrenheit to Celcius and Gas Mark
<th>° Fahrenheit</th><th>° Celcius</th><th>Gas Mark</th>
2251101/4
2501201/2
2751351
3001502
3251603
3501754
3751905
4002056
4252207
4502308
4752459
50026010

Celcius to Fahrenheit to Gas Mark
<th>° Celcius</th><th>° Fahrenheit</th><th>Gas Mark</th>
1102301/4
1202501/2
1302651
1402851
1503002
1603203
1703404
1803554
1903755
2003906
2104106
2204307
2304458
2404659
2504809
26050010

Gas Mark to Fahrenheit to Celcius
<th>Gas Mark</th><th>° Fahrenheit</th><th>° Celcius</th>
1/4225110
1/2250120
1275135
2300150
3325160
4350175
5375190
6400205
7425220
8450230
9475245
10500260

Sometimes there will be recipes which use terms like "slow" or "hot" to describe oven temperatures. The following table summarizes approximate temperatures for these terms.

Verbal to Fahrenheit, Celcius, and Gas Mark
<th>Verbal</th><th>° Fahrenheit</th><th>° Celcius</th><th>Gas Mark</th>
Cool/Very Slow Cook2501201/2
Warm/Slow Cook3001502
Moderate3501754
Moderately hot3751905
Hot4252207
Very hot4502308
Extremely hot4752459


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Paul
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 2:00 pm    Post subject: Oven temps Reply with quote

The Germans and Austrians also seem to have a different system where "Stufe 4" is roughly gas mark 7. As an Englishman in Austria with an old oven in my apartment, this confuses me no end.
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Urgoll
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 3:05 pm    Post subject: Gas Mark ? Reply with quote

Does anyone here know the history of Gas Marks ? I've seen those used in french cooking books (and was uterly confused). What I don't understand is how good it can be to control the oven temperature ? Doesn't the oven heat capacity (btu/hr?) change from one model to another ?
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Michael Chu



Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 1654
Location: Austin, TX (USA)

PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:08 pm    Post subject: Re: Oven temps Reply with quote

Paul wrote:
The Germans and Austrians also seem to have a different system where "Stufe 4" is roughly gas mark 7. As an Englishman in Austria with an old oven in my apartment, this confuses me no end.

I found a website at http://www.xs4all.nl/~margjos/oven.htm that had some Stufe (degree in german?) equivalences and added them to the Gas Mark table.

Urgoll wrote:
Does anyone here know the history of Gas Marks ? I've seen those used in french cooking books (and was uterly confused). What I don't understand is how good it can be to control the oven temperature ? Doesn't the oven heat capacity (btu/hr?) change from one model to another ?

Gas Marks, as it is used today, is a term for temperature and not for energy (btu) or power (btu/hr). The ovens are presumably adjusted so that enough energy is produced by the burners to maintain a relatively standardized Gas Mark. Although, the etymology of the term is unclear (I believe the Oxford English Dictionary just started another search for early references of the term), it probably started out as an arbitrary unit of burned gas and then evolved into a (more or less) specific temperature, but that's just my guess. Any language experts out there who can provide us the origins of this term?
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Kitchen Parade
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 1:08 pm    Post subject: Thank you! Reply with quote

Thank you for the oven conversions! If you'd tackle the similar kitchen conversions - esp grams/cups which I KNOW aren't technically convertible but yet need to be for cooking practices - it'd be much appreciated. I've searched all over for an easy reference with no luck. Alanna
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fwendy



Joined: 12 Aug 2005
Posts: 19
Location: UK

PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 1:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gas fuelled ovens would have been the first step in the progression from cooking on a wood or coal heated range.

As cooks would have previously controlled heat by burning more or less fuel, they would not expect a thermostatically controlled oven - indeed, would have had no concept of it. Even today, the famous AGA ranges have no way of controlling the temperature by use of a thermostat.

Only when thermostatically controlled electric ovens became available would it have been necessary for gas oven manufacturers to try to produce a matching feature.
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drObviousSo
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 2:29 pm    Post subject: Verbal = good Reply with quote

Thanks for the verbal conversions. I'm never sure how to treat those

DrObvious
www.zigguratofdoom.com
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marcsala



Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 3
Location: Berkeley, CA

PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 6:19 am    Post subject: The right temperature Reply with quote

The temperature on the dial and the temperature in the oven rarely match, and sometimes differ by 100 degrees F. Even new ovens. Therefore, for the best results, an oven thermometer is critical. (Unless your oven only has gas mark, I suppose.)

Back in March/April 2002, Cook's Illustrated reviewed 8 oven thermometers. As part of the study, they compared 16 home ovens and only 9 of the 16 were within +/- 25 F of the target of 350 F. Their favorite was the Taylor Classic Oven Guide (~$15), with high marks also going to the Component MOTI and Cooper 24HP. The full article might be at the Cook's Illustrated website, but is probably behind a dollar-wall. I've had a Taylor for a few years and it has improved my baking experience by removing one source of uncertainty.
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Paz



Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 12:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is definitely a handy conversion list to have on hand. Thanks!

Paz
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In order to be a more versatile baker, I have a digital cooking thermometer. Not only can I accurately gauge the temperature of a candy or roast (I'm vegetarian; tofubeast internal temperature is, you know, so extremely important), but I can bake on a stove. This is important, since I've wanted to make bread for my kosher friends using a dorm kitchen, and kosherizing a dorm oven is rather difficult (they tell me it requires a blowtorch), whereas a new large pot and a thermometer can get to a rather high temperature.
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marcsala



Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 3
Location: Berkeley, CA

PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 9:08 pm    Post subject: The engineer's way to calibrate the oven Reply with quote

I forgot to include this tale in my post about oven thermometers above: Back in grad school (ME at UC Berkeley), I borrowed a type K thermocouple (with heat resistant wire insulation) and a thermocouple reader and brought it home to check out my oven. Over the course of an afternoon I created a calibration chart for the oven dial. If I remember correctly, the offset was relatively constant across the range, about 50 F. My housemates made jokes about this for a long time. And still ask if I can calibrate their oven.

But the super engineer way would be to bring home 9 or 16 or more thermocouples, arrange them in a 3-D grid in the oven, and then run it at each temperature setting until steady state was reached. Then input the data into SigmaPlot or other 3-D plotting program. The data and plots could help you know where the hot spots are and etc.
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Zach from New York
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:07 pm    Post subject: Grams to Cups is not convertIble Reply with quote

Kitchen Parade wrote:

Quote:
If you'd tackle the similar kitchen conversions - esp grams/cups which I KNOW aren't technically convertible but yet need to be for cooking practices - it'd be much appreciated. I've searched all over for an easy reference with no luck.


The reason you can't find an easy reference is there is no direct correllation of weight to volume. This is why many baking recipes specify weight: because volume is just too innacurate.

For example, 1/2 cup of kosher salt uniformly weighs about 64 grams. But 1/2 cup of flour, although it will weigh similarly to the salt, can vary tremendously by how densely it's "packed" when you take your 1/2 cup measurement. It could weigh as little as 60g and as much as 72g. (This is why recipes which call for cups of flour may tell you to measure it by "spooning it lightly" into the cup and levelling it off without any kind of packing or tamping down). And 1/2 cup of sugar (white, granulated) uniformly weighs almost double the kosher salt: about 104-106 grams.

It gets stickier when you start to measure items which are not granular by nature. "A cup of choclate chips" will vary greatly in terms of overall chocolate depending on how large the chips are, and what their shape is. Smaller, rectangular-shaped chips will give you far more weight (and therefore, far more chocolate) per cup than larger, teardrop-shaped ones.

So there's no universal conversion chart you could get.....you could only have a chart that mentioned each ingredient by name.

Or, invest $13 in a small digital kitchen scale which will last you a lifetime, and which you'll find you use all the time once you have it... Smile
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ColsHub
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:53 pm    Post subject: BTU to Temp Reply with quote

I'm not sure there's an answer to this, but here goes anyway...
Say I have a chiller with a 38,000btu/hr (11,137 watts) capacity and it's running all out. Say the only thing it's cooling is a 1'x1'x1' box. With the chiller running, the surface of the box is room temp. If the chiller takes out what the box puts in, the box must be generating 38,000btu/hr. Assuming all sorts of stuff to make this problem simple, can I determine the temperature of the surface of the box when the chiller is off?

Thanks
Paul.James@HS.UTC.com
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polysmart
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:02 am    Post subject: surface temperature of the box Reply with quote

It is very simple to find it. However, you should first know what the box is made up of..cause you are gonna search for the heat conversion coefficient(h) and thermal conductivity(k) of the box based on the material from any chemical engineering handbook. Then, you can calculate the surface temperature of the box by using heat transfer equations.
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ewynn@pivot.net
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 2:48 pm    Post subject: cooking Propane , BTU /hr at 300º Reply with quote

I'm trying to find out the cost of baking for an hour at 300º
using a commercial gas oven.
cost of propane is variable, a gallon of propane has about 90k BTU
so looking for the btu per hour consumption
any help ?

I've been on the net for an hour searching
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