Oven Temperature

An Easy Way to Adjust Your Gas Stove Temperature to Correct Settings

So you are cooking and baking and everything constantly seems to be coming out all wrong. Things are undercooked or over cooked. Food doesn’t taste right. Cakes aren’t spongy and your meatloaf would be better served as asphalt.



Don’t worry. It’s probably just that your gas oven needs to have its temperature setting adjusted. If you still have the manual, you should dig it out and follow the instructions here. If you don’t, try this fairly simple and surprising easy way to adjust the temperature of your stove or oven.

Of course, if you need help, you can always contact us and book an appointment for an appliance service call and one of our qualified experts will come to you and take a look at the problem.

First, you need to determine if your gas stove temperature really is correct or not. To do this, you need to an oven thermometer, which is available at pretty much any grocery store for typically not more than $10. Before turning on the oven and presetting a temperature, make sure that you put your oven rack in the center of the oven. Follow instructions on the thermometer packaging. Usually it will say to hang the thermometer from one of the rods of the oven rack.

Next, turn on the oven to 350 degrees – a fairly common temperature used when baking in your gas oven. Heat the oven for 15 minutes and check the thermometer reading. Make a note. Do this again five minutes later and a third time 5 minutes later.

You should now add the three temperature readings together and then divide the result by 3. This will give you an average temperature. If this average oven temperature is within 10 degrees of 350 degrees, (so somewhere between 340 and 360), your oven temperature is okay and you can turn off your oven or starting cooking!

If your oven temperature is less than 340 degrees or more than 360 degrees, you will need to adjust the temperature. To do this correctly, you will need to understand that we will be adjusting the oven knob in a way that it will more accurately be able to set the oven to the desired temperature. We will not be adjusting the thermostat or fixtures of the oven. For that, you should call a qualified appliance service technician who will be happy to perform those tasks according to training and certifications.

To adjust the knob setting, use two hands and, from the back of the oven knob, pull the knob off with a firm grip. Now, once off, look at the back of the knob. There are typically 2 screws that hold the face of the knob, the degree markings, in place. Have a look to see where the guage on the back currently points, which might be the center. Using a screwdriver, you can loosen the screws so that you can twist the face of the knob and reposition the numbers to match the temperature in the oven. You’ll need to reposition the pointer on the back of the knob to be half way between the marks. Tighten the screws again and then replace the knob on the oven. You can reset the oven temperature to 350 and wait 15 minutes. Note the temperature and then wait 5 minutes and 5 minutes. Is your average temperature closer to 350 this time?

Remember, its very difficult to get it completely accurate but you are better to leave it on the lower side than the higher side. When cooking, and especially baking, its always possible to put it back in the oven a little longer but impossible to ‘remove’ over cooking later.

And don’t forget. We are always free to help you if you need a qualified appliance repair technician at your service.