Most cooks know that opening the oven releases heat which slows cooking. But on cooking competition shows, many skilled chefs check their oven often, resulting in undercooked food. Do these chefs know something we don’t know, or are they actually making this rookie mistake?
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Mass does not lose heat that fast. Some little thing, maybe. A big fat roast or casserole is not going to cool so quickly as to slow down cooking. A few seconds is lost, maybe, but not much.
In competitions, the only thing you’re doing is cooking, and there’s money on the line, so it’s stressful. Especially in baking shows, there’s a lot of downtime while stuff is in the oven, so they’re sitting there stewing in their own stress while they wait.
Also on those cooking shows, they always say to “make sure you add salt”, “season your food” all the time. There’s no way I could tolerate the amount of salt they use on camera sometimes, let alone have it taste good. At the end of the day, a lot of it is just plain fake.
It depends what you’re cooking. Something like a soufflé or a puff pastry of any kind you do not touch. Just time it out.
Now, if you’re cooking a turkey, you need to open the oven every 20 minutes to baste for what could be 4 hours of total cook time. The thermal mass keeps the oven from getting too cool. The food will still come out the correct temp. Nothing will be undercooked unless you pull too soon. Braised short ribs need a bit of fussing too sometimes. My recipe only needs one fussing but my wife’s needs 3 fussings.
Bread, you usually don’t have to check on. Just use time and check when you pull it.
In the end, open the oven if you need to, but if it’s something that is baked based purely on time, don’t. Once you know your oven, you can adjust times accordingly.
FYI, if you are using a conventional oven (element up top) to cook a pizza, it is advantageous to keep the oven door open long enough when putting the pizza in to trigger the heating element to come back on.
That way more direct heat is applied to the pizza promoting a more dramatic rise of the crust!
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