How To Easily Test Your Broiler For Uneven Hot Spots

Have you ever pulled out a sheet of cookies and found that some were burnt? Or, perhaps you ended up with a lopsided cake despite evenly filling the pan and giving it a tap on the counter. Those mistakes and more are caused by hot spots in your oven, where one area receives higher heat than others. Hot spots are common in ovens, whether they're gas or electric. Nearly every oven has this problem, but there's an easy way to test your broiler (the root of many baking mistakes) for hot spots.

Hot spots can be caused by the position of the heat source, issues with air circulation, or the size of the oven. Large ovens have more surface area to heat, therefore the heat can be unevenly distributed as it moves from the source. You can easily locate your hot spots by conducting a test with a few slices of white bread. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lay white bread on a baking tray or directly on the oven rack. You want the bread to cover the entire tray or a majority of the rack. Let the bread cook for 10 minutes before turning the oven off and looking at the results. The areas where the bread is more toasted than others are hot spots.

Once you remove the white bread from the oven after the broiler test, you are left with a map of your oven. The areas where the bread is darker were exposed to higher heat. You can apply a similar logic to the areas of the bread that are cooked the least. However, if you ended up with evenly browned bread, that means you have nothing to worry about. 

Before moving on, take a picture or take notes of the bread to adjust your baking habits moving forward. We recommend repeating the test with new slices of white bread on the other racks. In addition to white bread, you can use white sugar cookies. The cookies will yield a sweet treat after the science experiment, but so can the bread — you can enjoy a plate of toast or make breadcrumbs or croutons. 

Knowing where your hot spots are can improve your cooking and baking. Is there more heat towards the back of your oven? Or, maybe the entire right side of your oven cooks faster. Knowing this information means you can avoid the hot spot when cooking. Or, you can rotate your pans during cooking to ensure that each side is exposed to the high heat.