The Cake Ina Garten Never Preheats Her Oven To Bake

Most tried-and-tested bakers know the drill: Before you prep your mise en place, before you mix together any ingredients, and occasionally even before you read through a recipe in its entirety, you start preheating your oven. In fact, many baking projects can end in dissatisfaction or even disaster if your oven hasn't been hot enough for long enough. But the truth of the matter is that starting your bake in a piping hot oven versus a cold one has everything to do with what you're baking. Some breads, desserts, and breakfast pastries, like scones, biscuits, and ciabatta, need to bake quickly in a hot oven. But others, especially those with a leavener in the ingredients list, can actually benefit from a slow start.

When it comes to one specific dessert, this cold-oven technique has become a whispered secret passed down through generations of bakers. But chef, cookbook author, and long-time Food Network star Ina Garten has since brought this strategy to the mainstream. Discussing her perfect pound cake recipe on her Barefoot Contessa website she says unequivocally, "DO NOT preheat the oven." Instead, you start your oven when the cake goes in, allowing the exterior crust to brown even more slowly while the cake itself rises to impressive heights.

Pound cake, the deliciously old-school dessert made from flour, butter, eggs, and sugar, has few faults. But one complaint is how dark and thick the edges of the cake can get thanks to its longer baking time. Plus, once those edges have firmly set, your pound cake won't be eager to rise any farther, which can leave you with a slightly stodgy crumb. By starting your cake in a cold oven, the edges of your cake will take their sweet time to develop, which allows the cake itself to rise higher and creates a lovely thin crust with a slight caramel flavor.

The same cold-oven principles that apply to pound cake can apply to other desserts as well. The baking powder in muffins has more time to activate, building up an even taller muffin top. The baking soda in chewy chocolate chip cookies has more time to acclimatize, preventing your perfectly dolloped cookies from spreading far and wide. Make a batch of your favorite baked goods and try a side-by-side comparison yourself — you might be shocked by the difference a slow start can make. In terms of baking time, you will want to add some time onto what your recipe calls for when experimenting. Consider how long your oven usually takes to warm up, then knock off a few minutes. As long as you keep an eye on the oven door, you'll be well satisfied.