How do home ovens have hotter or colder zones inside, requiring you to rotate the pan or whatever is cooking. Wouldn’t a small enclosed space have a consistent temperature throughout? And bonus follow up, what sort of degree variation can there be?

Question

How do home ovens have hotter or colder zones inside, requiring you to rotate the pan or whatever is cooking. Wouldn’t a small enclosed space have a consistent temperature throughout? And bonus follow up, what sort of degree variation can there be?

In: 18

Answer 1

Many ovens use heating elements where a significant amount of the energy transfer (particularly before the oven is at full temp) is via infrared radiation, thus the heating pattern looks more like shining a light inside a box – where are shadows and places where more light is direct, and some where it’s mostly reflected, or even relatively dim.

Once the oven is up to temperature, the whole of the “box” of the oven is also radiating heat, making the oven “light” much more uniform.