10
Some hints
For baking cakes
Cakes require a moderate temperature
(normally between 150 and 200 °C). In
addition, the oven must be heated up
beforehand - for about 10 minutes.
The oven door should not be opened before at
least 3/4 of the set cooking time is up.
Normal short pastry dough should be cooked
in a mould or tin for 2/3 of total cooking time
required and then garnished as desired before
being cooked completely.
Clearly, the remaining cooking time depends
on the type of garnish used (jam, fruit, etc.).
Care should be taken to ensure that any dough
and cake mixes are of the right consistency
since an unduly moist mix lengthens cooking
time unnecessarily. The raw dough or mix
should therefore be fairly difficult to detach from
the spoon or beater.
If three shelves are filled with cakes and tarts
simultaneously, it is advisable to slot in an
extra shelf between the two lower shelves (Fig.
5).
For cooking meat and fish
Meat cooked in the oven should weigh at least
1 kg to prevent it from becoming too dry dur-
ing cooking. Very tender red meat to be cooked
rare, i.e. well cooked on the outside but
extremely juicy inside, requires
high-temperature cooking (200-220 °C).
White meat, poultry and fish instead require
low-temperature cooking (150-175 °C).
The ingredients for the accompanying sauce
or gravy should be put in the baking pan at
the very beginning only when cooking times
are short.
Otherwise they should be added during the
last half hour. A simple way of checking
whether meat is done or not is to press it with
a spoon; if the meat does not yield under this
pressure it means that it is done to a turn. In
the case of roast beef and fillet steaks, the
inside of which should remain fairly pink in
color, cooking times must be short.
The meat can be cooked in a baking pan or
else directly on the shelf - in this case a dripping
pan must obviously be placed underneath the
shelf to collect the juice.
Should you cook very fat food, place the meat
directly on the grill and the grill over the dripping
pan in order not to dirty the oven.
Once the meat is cooked, it is advisable to let
it rest for at least 15 minutes before carving
so that the juice does not seep out.
To prevent the formation of too much smoke
in the oven during roasting, it is a good idea to
pour a little water into the dripping pan and—
to prevent steam—to add a little bit more dur-
ing cooking if the original amount dries up too
much.
Before serving, the various courses can be
kept hot in the oven which should be turned
down to the minimum temperature.
Warning!
- Do not place objects on
the bottom of the oven and do not cover
it with aluminium foil while cooking, as
you can damage the enamelled
surfaces and the food you are cooking.
Always place pans, heat-resisting pans
and aluminium foils on the oven shelves.
Warning!
- Be careful when you insert
and extract the grid and the dripping
pan from the oven in order not to damage
the enamelled surfaces of the oven
cavity.
Cooking times
Cooking times vary according to the type of
food to be cooked, its consistency, and
volume.We suggest that you take particular
note of your first cooking experiments with the
oven, since operating in the same conditions
for the same dishes you will of course obtain
similar results.
Only experience will enable you to make the
appropriate changes to values given on charts.
