Tins & Tools
Your oven dial is a suggestion and a cheap thermometer proves it
Domestic ovens routinely run twenty degrees away from their setting and swing thirty degrees either side of it as the thermostat…
Tins & Tools
Ovens, scales, tins and the small number of things worth owning.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Tins & Tools
A set of one gram scales is the cheapest upgrade in the kitchen
Volume measures for flour vary by twenty per cent or more depending on how the cup was filled, which is enough to change a recipe into a different recipe.
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Tins & Tools
Fan or conventional: the twenty degree rule and when it misleads
A fan moves hot air across the food, which transfers heat far faster than still air. Dropping the temperature compensates for the…
Tins & Tools
A baking steel or stone is thermal mass, and that is the whole benefit
The stone does not cook differently. It stores a large amount of heat and dumps it into the base of whatever you put on it faster…
Tins & Tools
Tin material and colour change the bake more than the recipe admits
Dark steel, shiny aluminium, glass and ceramic transfer heat at very different rates, and the same batter in each comes out visibly…
Tins & Tools
Tin volume, not tin diameter, is what you scale a recipe by
Moving from a 20cm round to a 23cm round is not a small change. The area grows by a third, and the batter depth changes everything…
Tins & Tools
Stand mixer, hand mixer or hands: what each is actually good at
The three tools are not ranked. Each does one part of baking better than the others, and knowing which is which saves both money…
Tins & Tools
A probe thermometer removes the biggest guess in baking
Doneness is a temperature event, and almost every other test is an indirect proxy for it. A twenty second measurement replaces all…
Tins & Tools
Parchment, silicone mats and greasing: which surface for which bake
The lining is not just about release. It changes how much heat reaches the base and how much the item spreads while it bakes.
Tins & Tools
A lidded cast iron pot is the best steam device most kitchens already own
It works because it traps the loaf's own moisture in a small volume, which no amount of water thrown into a vented domestic oven…
Tins & Tools
Controlling dough temperature without buying a proving cabinet
Fermentation is a temperature problem, and every solution to it is really just a way of holding a small volume of air steady for a…
Tins & Tools
The five small tools that change bread more than any appliance
A bench scraper, a blade, a banneton, a scale and a probe cost less between them than one mixer, and each removes a specific…