What’s the point of having a thermometer that doesn’t measure the temperature in your oven correctly? If you don’t have an oven thermometer and you’re trying to bake, then you might be wondering how to tell if your Oven Calibration correctly.
You may also want to know whether or not even an accurate oven thermometer can give a different reading than the one on your stove.
My oven is calibrated correctly.
- Check the oven temperature. A proper oven should heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit when preheated for 30 minutes, and it should maintain this temperature for at least 10 minutes. You can use an oven thermometer to measure the heat inside your oven.
- Check your thermometer’s accuracy by calibrating it with ice water or boiling water in a pot on your stovetop; make sure that you don’t need to add more than one degree of difference between its reading and either extreme (ice or liquid).
- Repeat this process until you have determined if your thermometer is accurate enough to let you know whether or not there is an issue with your oven.
Even my thermometer reads differently.
Thermometers are not created equal and neither does their accuracy. Some are more accurate than others. A digital oven thermometer will be more accurate than a mercury based one, for example.
However, even within the same type of thermometer there can be variation in accuracy due to factors like how long it has been since calibrated or if they were stored at an improper temperature while not in use (too hot or too cold).
Relative humidity affects readings.
The relative humidity, or RH, of the air in your kitchen can have a direct impact on the temperature readings from your oven thermometer. The higher the relative humidity (RH), the lower your oven thermometer will read.
On dry days when there is little moisture in the air and you feel like you need to turn up your AC or heat, it is important that you understand how this impacts your oven thermometer readings. The same applies if it has been raining for days and everything smells so fresh! If this is happening while you are trying to use an oven thermometer, then accuracy may be affected by a large amount of water vapor in the air around us.
Resolution and precision are different things. Resolution is the smallest change in a measurement that can be detected; precision is how consistently the measurement can be made.
For example, if you have an oven thermometer with 0.1 degree of resolution, this means that any reading below 10 degrees F will be rounded up to 10 and above -10 degrees will also be rounded down to -10! In other words, this thermometer has no sensitivity at all and will produce readings only as precise as plus or minus 10 degrees F!
Conclusion
I hope that this article helped you understand the difference between resolution and precision in thermometers. Now that you know all about Oven Calibration, you can enjoy perfect baking results!