this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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There are only few things that are really sensitive towards low temperatures - cookie doughs, soufflé and maybe bread. For any other food preheating the oven ia just a waste of energy.
Food companies only write it on the instructions because the time the food needs in the oven is not valid when they have to count in the speed your oven needs to heat up.
Element is on max while preheating the oven, this can overcook the surface of the food before cooking even starts.
A simple example is a frozen pizza. The crust will overcook and burn before the toppings brown.
Only example I needed. What else would I be putting in my oven?
Broccoli
i turn on the oven right before grabbing the pizza. by the time the pizza is unwrapped, and doctored-up if i'm gonna add something, the oven is 'warm enough'. if a brand of pizza routinely gets done 'too fast' on the bottom, i put a cookie sheet on the other rack underneath the pizza with about 4 minutes left. if i add lots of cheese or other stuff to the top, i might pop on the broiler for the last minute. only need 325F regardless of what the box says, and less time than it says, and the rack the pizza is on has to go one notch higher in the oven than for everything else. my oven is stupid. it only took like 10 years of trial-and-error to figure out the best way to make a frozen pizza in it, and step 1 is 'ignore the instructions'.
As I type, I'm eating previously frozen pizza I put in a cold oven then turned on fan mode at 180. By the time it reached temperature it was evenly cooked