Wouldn't be without it (Lakeland Oven Thermometer)

Member Name: Andy2901

Product:	Lakeland Oven Thermometer
Date:	29/09/08 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Saves time, food and swearing

Disadvantages: none

I like to think I'm more than a bit handy in the cooking/baking department with some of the attributes of the top chef's. The temperment of Gordon Ramsey, the Gary Rhodes like attention to detail of my hair, the figure of Worrall Thompson and the urge to be the Naked Chef in the kitchen with Nigella Lawson and pop a bun or two in her oven.

So, when things started going wrong I wasn't a happy chappy. My first inkling things weren't right was when my mother came for dinner, a nice joint of beef, browned, seasoned to perfection then into the oven for the allotted time, it looked like perfection when removed. All I can say is when it came to slicing it, there's rare, this was extra extra rare. I put this down a one off, blamed the meat for being dodgy.

My next clue came when I baked some chocolate centred cookies for my daughter, she always sells these at school fund raising events. For the first time ever they didn't turn out right, they looked perfect, but were undercooked in the middle. Cheap own brand flour was my excuse this time.

The truth finally hit me when I decided we'd have roast chicken one night, again perfectly prepared and into the oven, when the time came to remove it, it looked perfecto, however I knew yet again I'd managed to undercook something when it jumped out of the oven and ran round the kitchen squawking, stopping only to lay ready boiled eggs.

I knew then my oven was knackered but in the back of my mind was a distant memory of reading somewhere the way to test your oven is make a Victoria sponge mix and bake it on the middle shelf at the correct setting and the finished result will give you a good idea if your oven's, A) level, B) your thermostat's working correctly. The result was, A) my oven's level, B) it's a temperature problem, again it looked cooked but wasn't done in the middle.

A bit of internet research informed me oven thermostats can be tempermental even in new ovens and reccomended always testing your oven with a thermometer, so I went straight out and bought one. It's a nice shiny sturdy chrome one with an easy to read dial, and you can use it in both gas and electric ovens.
I then spent a whole morning testing the oven. Before you start, you need a temperature conversion chart telling you the gas mark equivelant, eg, gas mark4 = 180c, 350f.
A lot of recipe books have these in or you can find it on the internet.

This thermometer measures in both centigrade and faranheit so you get an accurate reading and you can either hang it from a shelf or stand it on one, I did both ways on every shelf so I'd have a pretty accurate idea of how my oven performed. The best way is to start on the lowest setting and work your way up, it saves you alot of time waiting for the oven to drop temp and maybe giving you false readings.

Conclusion: My oven is working approx 2 settings lower than it should, so for a recipe requiring gas 5 I use 7, although I do put the thermometer in every time now and go by that. As they're metal and glass don't forget your gloves or you'll burn your pinkies. These are one of the most useful things you can have in your kitchen, I wonder how many people think they can't bake and it's all because their ovens not hitting the right temperature for the mark.

Ladies, get one bought, you'll know your baking's spot on and if your husband finds fault, inform him all them years of sniffing his socks when removing them has ruined his palate. Plus they're even attractive enough to leave on a shelf and read your room temperature.

Summary: A truely useful kitchen gadget