I have come to the conclusion that i love cooking but hate baking? Why? Because baking is too much like quantum physics. The act of observing changes the result of the experiment. I am not crazy, hear me out.
Think about it: When you open your oven to inspect the status of whatever it is you are baking, perhaps cutting into it to see if the inside is done, you are letting a lot of the heat out and the whole timing of the recipe is thrown off! How are you supposed to know how many extra minutes this adds to the baking time?!
It must have taken so much trial and error and so many wasted ingredients for the people who came up with the recipes for baking before they got it right…
Just a random thought that popped into my head today while i was preparing dinner.
Also worth considering that every oven is different and thus there is a lot of variation, your oven might say its at 300F while its really at 330F in the and 280F in the bottom. May not seem that much but if youre cooking a big piece over a long time, like a turkey, that slight variation is the difference between an undercooked turkey or a dry turkey lol.
My oven even has a temperature differential between back and front, not just top and bottom. I occasionally like to roast veggies by spreading them out on a tray in the oven, and it’s very noticeable that the ones in front get more cooked than the ones in the back.