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Post by mach12 on Sept 21, 2020 13:41:28 GMT -5
I've noticed that my oven is a bit hotter in the back and am just curious whether anyone else has this issue. I've tried putting one of those insulated cookie sheet on the cast iron floor and on the lower rack and no difference. CWTGTO doesn't seem to matter either. Yesterday I made a recipe that we got from one of those recipe booklets you see in the checkout lane, called sketti squares, that's great for using leftover spaghetti sauce. You cook the spaghetti, mix an egg and a cup of milk, coat the spaghetti with the milk/egg mix and then put the spaghetti and leftover milk/egg mix into a lightly greased pan, spread spaghetti sauce on it, lay thin sliced salami on it, and then spread a cup of mozzarella on it, (more like 1 1/2 when I make it). The booklet says to bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes. I preheat about 5 minutes, put it in 10 minutes gas on, then 30 minutes gas off, then take a peek at the color and leave it until it's how I like it. Probably another 10 minutes. I like to cook it until the cheese is lightly browned, and it seems the back browns first. Our cakes bake even, so it's not severe, but it still makes me wonder. Is this normal on other stoves or is it mine, or maybe just a BZ issue? Here's what yesterday's batch looked like when it came out.
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Post by Chuckie on Sept 21, 2020 15:02:30 GMT -5
I've noticed that my oven is a bit hotter in the back and am just curious whether anyone else has this issue. I've tried putting one of those insulated cookie sheet on the cast iron floor and on the lower rack and no difference. CWTGTO doesn't seem to matter either. Yesterday I made a recipe that we got from one of those recipe booklets you see in the checkout lane, called sketti squares, that's great for using leftover spaghetti sauce. You cook the spaghetti, mix an egg and a cup of milk, coat the spaghetti with the milk/egg mix and then put the spaghetti and leftover milk/egg mix into a lightly greased pan, spread spaghetti sauce on it, lay thin sliced salami on it, and then spread a cup of mozzarella on it, (more like 1 1/2 when I make it). The booklet says to bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes. I preheat about 5 minutes, put it in 10 minutes gas on, then 30 minutes gas off, then take a peek at the color and leave it until it's how I like it. Probably another 10 minutes. I like to cook it until the cheese is lightly browned, and it seems the back browns first. Our cakes bake even, so it's not severe, but it still makes me wonder. Is this normal on other stoves or is it mine, or maybe just a BZ issue? Here's what yesterday's batch looked like when it came out. Ours cooks HOTTER near the rear as well, as does cinnabar's I believe she posted. Seems like a common issue in the "B"/"BZ's" and earlier perhaps? I usually just set the timer for 1/2 way, then spin whatever I'm cooking. I've never noticed any probs CWTGTO, guess I just never CHECKED if the backside got browner or not?... And a friend of ours gave us a recipe for "Spaghetti Pie" many years ago, uses up leftovers the same way. Put the noodles in the bottom of a deep pie dish w/a coupla eggs, a bit of butter and Parmesan cheese I THINK. Then spaghetti sauce and cheese on the top like you said. The "crust" holds together, and you can slice it when it comes outta the oven... CHEERS! Chuckie
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Post by vaporvac on Sept 21, 2020 17:02:25 GMT -5
I have to admit, I bake almost all my casseroles in the Twell so I'm not much help. Usually the oven is reserved for cakes, bread and Thanksgiving, although I even cook bread in the Twell if it's just one loaf. I do wonder about the issue though. Edit: thinking on the bread, I vaguely rmember my B does the same when I'm cooking multiple loaves. I'll try to remember to look the next time, although I usually use the C for bread. It's hard to keep all these stoves straight! : ))
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Post by karitx on Sept 22, 2020 11:35:13 GMT -5
My C oven browns a little unevenly, although I can't remember at the moment which end browns first. The only time it has affected me is while baking cookies, so I usually just rotate the cookie sheet for a few minutes at the end to even it up.
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Post by pooka on Sept 22, 2020 13:56:21 GMT -5
I'm going to take a stab at this, although I'm not highly educated. I think it's at least partly due to something called the Venturi effect. In brief, that's a flow of gasses or air speeding up as it's forced into a smaller pathway. Air comes into the intake, & is heated by the burner. It expands & rises, mainly funneled up the sides of the oven by the side panels, but somewhat up the rear. Radiant heat also forces air to rise from the top of the cast iron baffle plate or bottom. All that heated air hits the top of the oven with no where to go except out the small exhaust vent in the back. It's like the whistle on a hot water kettle. The air hast to speed up to get out that little opening. So it's like the blast of hot air from a blow dryer near the rear vent. This would explain more browning in the rear of the oven. If I'm not mistaken, the Chambers Idle Hour Cook Book instructs you to rotate some things half way through the time for even browning. The pic bellow is a cut away of a 20s era oven, but it shows the air flow through the oven. In these older ovens, the intake was a series of slots along the bottom of the bottom in the front, whereas later oven it's in the middle of the oven. The ovens have been tweaked some over the years, but really is little changed since the very earliest ones. It's an insulated box that has always been the same optimal size, & having a cast iron baffle plate above the burner, & side panels on either side. & the exhaust vent in the center of the back. They've moved the intake a bit, & used different burners, & with the model B, modified the side panels & racks, but otherwise it basically the same oven from a hundred years ago. Oh, they've tweaked the cast iron baffle plate a bit too, but not much.
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Post by vaporvac on Sept 22, 2020 17:25:08 GMT -5
That's as good an explanation as any, Pooka!, so I'd go with that! : )) Besides this back browing, I've found it does give a convection affect not dissimilar to my convection oven, in that the heating was more even from top to bottom. I recall seeing these pics prior and it explained that aspect for me.
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Post by mach12 on Sept 22, 2020 18:19:56 GMT -5
Good info Pooka. And the part about the Idle Hour saying to rotate some stuff, now that you mention it I think I remember reading that somewhere. The military has an acronym, RTFM, whim is for "Read The 'Friggin' Manual". I have, but then Re-reading might be in order lol. Last night Dwayner and I were going over how I installed the safety system pilot in Pepper and I sent him a picture I took while I was installing it and in the background is the round lower damper plate and on the plate is the speed nut I put on the plate to keep the plate open so the pilot has air to keep burning. The theory is that the burning pilot will replace any lost heat from the damper being held open. looking at the airflow illustration I'm wondering whether that could be having an impact. I have a digital thermostat that I think has long enough leads and has four leads to maybe I can feed them through where the oven burner goes through the oven wall (another possible source of cooler air?) and take some readings. I know my oven door is sealing well because wen I close the door with a strip of paper in the door it holds it tight. Here's the picture with the clip on the damper. Kind of have to look close being a black clip on a black damper. The flame was actually burning in this picture but you sure can't tell.
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Post by pooka on Sept 22, 2020 18:47:58 GMT -5
I'm unsure what the temperature differences would be in different areas of the oven once it's up to the set temp. It might not be that much, although I'm sure it would be hottest at the top, I lowest at the bottom front. It's just the speed the air is moving as it's pushed out that back vent. Air expand at such a great rate when heated, but once the oven get up to the set temp & goes to stand by mode to maintain the temp, the back vent is working like a blow off valve. Otherwise the pressure would increase like in a pressure cooker. But what air is escaping would be moving fastest right as it goes though the vent, thus, the blow dryer effect.
It can be tough to keep all the detail clear in your head at all times.
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Post by pooka on Sept 22, 2020 19:10:59 GMT -5
This makes me wonder if the earlier ovens heated more evenly having the intake vents in front, as far from the exhaust vent as possible. Having the vent in the center of the oven bottom seems like it would cause a cooler area along the bottom front of the oven. But maybe any area nearest the intake would be coolest. By putting the intake in the center, the incoming air is quickly heated by the burner, & expanding in all directions. The cooler spot around the vent would be balanced out by the radiant heat from the cast iron baffle plate diffusing the heat above it. It's tough to scorch anything in these ovens, because they have a built in heat diffuser.
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Post by Chuckie on Sept 22, 2020 21:33:04 GMT -5
This makes me wonder if the earlier ovens heated more evenly having the intake vents in front, as far from the exhaust vent as possible. Having the vent in the center of the oven bottom seems like it would cause a cooler area along the bottom front of the oven. But maybe any area nearest the intake would be coolest. By putting the intake in the center, the incoming air is quickly heated by the burner, & expanding in all directions. The cooler spot around the vent would be balanced out by the radiant heat from the cast iron baffle plate diffusing the heat above it. It's tough to scorch anything in these ovens, because they have a built in heat diffuser. Cinnabar's oven is ANCIENT compared to others on our websites, and I BELIEVE she's posted in the past the back of hers gets hotter too. I WILL stand corrected if I misspoke. And the Imperial ovens have the air intakes in the front as you said--TWO in the big Imperial oven--but haven't ran them enough to really add anything to this commentary. WHENEVER my B.I.L.'s place is DONE, will update. Wish momtommk still checked in now and again, she's had her Imperial up & running for some time now, she might be able to shed some MORE light on the subject...
Yet ANOTHER enigma of Chambersland--will they NEVER END?!!! *sigh*
CHEERS! Chuckie
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Post by mach12 on Sept 23, 2020 9:55:21 GMT -5
I guess what really surprised me was that I even see it when I'm cooking on retained heat. I wish we could get the records on Chambers' testing. They obviously tried different setups and it would be interesting to see the data. There's another floor damper arrangement in one of my 1936 A series Standard Heaters where they have smaller dual dampers that are positioned closer to the front of the oven.
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Post by earlh on Sept 23, 2020 10:23:36 GMT -5
If most of those people buying a gas stove grew up around wood and coal stoves, the little bit of uneven heat in a gas stove wouldn't have bothered them at all. Wood/coal ranges are very uneven because the firebox is usually on the left, but always on one side or the other. The owners manual in those days generally told you to leave some fly ash on top of the oven to help with that, or turn the stuff halfway through. I had a wood stove I cooked on in the winter for about 10 years and my Mom helped out a lot with that thing. things like putting a knife under a pot if the top of the stove is too hot, or even in the oven door if the fire got away from you. But with those things it also helps a lot to just lay aluminum foil over the top of what you're baking until it's about done and it needs to brown some.
My grandmother used the wood/cob situation in the winter and kerosene in the summer for cooking most of her life. Watching that 1925 Chambers stove demonstration was the way she used the oven. It was "on or off" and that regulator thing meant almost nothing to her. She would set the oven to 500 and stick her hand in it to see if it was the way she wanted and when it felt right the stuff went in and she would turn the heat way down then.
It's interesting to see the small changes the Chambers folks were making to try and solve some of these minor issues. It makes me wonder, if because of the way those ovens are vented during the firing process, if that heavy cast iron plate is just getting hotter at the rear and holding the heat after the fire is shut off. One of those infrared thermometers would sort that one out.
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Post by mach12 on Sept 23, 2020 16:13:32 GMT -5
I understand woodstoves and their quirks but what I'm looking at here is the particulars of a Chambers. We rebuilt our stove from the frame up and in the almost 3 years we've been using it we've noticed some things that I don't know whether they're particular to our stove and are possibly related to something I did or missed in the rebuild process or are normal for a Chambers. The difference in the temperatures are so minor that I don't know that they'd even be worth attempting to correct but I always want to improve the quality of my work and understanding the product is fundamental for that.
At this point it looks like this is a normal, minor, characteristic that really only impacts certain foods and is easy to deal with. I still want to determine the why of it though.
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Post by cinnabar on Sept 23, 2020 19:36:59 GMT -5
Honestly, I've been cooking so long with the Chambers I forget all the differences with other stoves. The top rack, all the way to the top does get too warm. This is from(I think) the reflective heat off the ceiling, rotating the pans is very helpful. Roasting say a chicken,(this week the 6+pounder was done in well under 2 hours)in cast iron in the oven is the best use of the retained heat there is. I set the rack on the lowest level or the oven floor and it is always perfect. When my Grandmother used the stove, I was told she put her hand in the oven to check the heat, then added food and adjusted the flame accordingly. I cheat and use a oven shelf thermometer. It helps having the gas valve working smoothly so that you control the flamage.
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Post by nana on Sept 24, 2020 5:26:01 GMT -5
I don’t notice enough of a difference from front to back in Marilyn (a C) to be any kind of issue, but I do use the slight heat differential from the bottom to the top of the oven to my advantage. Like if I make a fruit crisp with frozen fruit, I’ll put it on the bottom rack to make sure it bakes all the way through, and move it to the top to brown the topping.
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Post by pooka on Sept 24, 2020 9:15:10 GMT -5
A few generation ago, when more people cooked morning, noon & night, on top of other cooking for special event like church, school & family events, & canning on top of that, people got pretty used to their particular stove & it's idiosyncrasies. Plus, older generation experience with wood, coal, kerosene & gasoline stoves would add to knowledge of adjusting for different stoves.
Thermostats were invented in the late teen if I recall correctly, but weren't widely used until the mid to late 30s when they started being feature in all stoves. I think it was 1933 or 1934 when the first small & compact ones were patented. I'll bet they were a lot cheaper too. I'm guessing those early thermostats were a pretty expensive part, so most people did without. I understand the old carbon rod heat regulators are very accurate, but when you're used to judging temperature by sticking your hand in the middle of the oven, why spend extra for a thermostat.
If you run across any old cook books from before thermostats were common, they give temperatures as Very slow, Slow, Moderate, Fast/quick, Very fast/very quick. That threw me the first time I saw it. But when you're used to judging heat with your hand, that was good enough instructions. Much like cook books from a couple of centuries ago, they were written for people who already knew how to cook, so the recipes often weren't much more than a list of ingredients, & maybe rough idea of how to prepare it, or what it should look like. When it comes to building the perfect mouse trap, or any other tool, you're never going to get it perfect. Our stove are about as good as it gets, at least for us. If you can tweak your stove to refine the machine, have at it.
I've long said, a lot of things were perfected in the 30s & 40s, & kind of plateaued in the 50s. That's when rabbit consumerism has it's roots. Planed obsolescence was off to the races. One of the fatal flaw in a lot of things is the electronics that will never be as robust as the older mechanical methods. That, & things are just made less robustly. They aren't made for a long life. In the 30s, a toaster was an expensive convenience. They were finely designed & manufactured, & were built to last. Today, a toaster is something many buy at the dollar store for very little.
I won't say we haven't advanced up till now, but in many ways, our way of life is unsustainable. You can buy a three hundred dollar toaster, or a $7.99 one at the dollar store, but all those millions & millions of broken cheap ones burn through resources & overflow our land fills. At least some of us are smart enough to embrace the past when it best suit a particular need. But we'll equally embrace the cutting edge as in the internet that make me writing this possible. It's for us stick in the mud's to convince more people the wisdom of this path. The road to today is a long one. We didn't get here overnight. Societies steer like battle ships. They don't turn on a dime. All we can do is be good examples, & try to dissuade others from this road to waste & ruin.
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