How to Calibrate Your Oven for Better Baking

A New Yorker advice column by Helen Rosner addresses a reader's baking failures. The reader, who successfully cooks savory dishes, struggles with dry cakes, breads, and pastries despite measuring ingredients by weight and using room-temperature eggs and butter. Rosner shares her own past yeast problems, which she solved by realizing her yeast was dead. She advises the reader to calibrate their oven using an oven thermometer, as ovens often run hot or cold. She recommends testing at 250°F, 350°F, and 450°F to understand temperature discrepancies. For hot spots, she suggests a toast test with cheap bread slices on multiple racks. Additional kitchen calibration tips include measuring ladle volumes, timing burner boil times, measuring olive oil pours, timing butter softening, averaging pinch salt weights, and counting pepper grinder turns per teaspoon.