4 Things Dorie Greenspan Wants You To Know About Your Oven Before You Start Making Cookies

Legendary baker Dorie Greenspan has a few tips to ensure your holiday cookies turn out flawless—and they all come back to your oven.

Author of 15 cookbooks (the most recent of which is Dorie’s Anytime Cakes) and recipient of five James Beard awards, Greenspan is warm, realistic and wonderfully opinionated. A few seconds into our conversation, she told me, “I’m not a professional baker – I’m a home baker and always will be.” Her words are a reminder that despite her accolades, everything she teaches comes from a typical home oven.

First, Get to Know Your Oven with a Simple Test

“Think about your oven as your best friend. You want to know everything about her,” Greenspan told me. "Like any best friend, she has quirks!" She might have a hot back corner, a cooler patch near the door or a tendency to lose her temper when you interrupt her too often. “Even the fanciest ovens have hot spots.”

Greenspan recommends locating those hot spots by toasting an ingredient like shredded coconut or chopped nuts that can be incorporated into a holiday recipe later. My personal go-to is sliced sandwich bread. The best news? This is a one-and-done task. “There’s no need to retest your oven once you’ve done it,” Greenspan assured me. No matter the ingredient, here are the steps to follow when learning your oven.

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 2: Cover the baking sheet evenly with bread or shredded coconut.

Step 3: Bake until some pieces begin to color or toast. Wherever the browning starts first, that’s your hot spot.

Step 4: Adjust your baking and pan placement accordingly, avoiding placing desserts in the hot spots if possible.

Use an Oven Thermometer

Keep an oven thermometer inside your oven at all times. Dorie does. “I’ve never had one go bad,” she said, “but I replace it when it gets messy.”

If the temperature is consistently slightly off—less than 35 degrees F off—you can calibrate the oven’s thermostat yourself. Simply check your owner’s manual on how to do it. If it’s more than 35 degrees off, you’ll want to have an oven technician service it.

Leaving the thermometer in your oven even after you’ve calibrated it allows you to keep an eye on the oven temperature when you open and close the door. Open it for too long, and you’ll notice the temperature dip dramatically.

Don’t Rotate Your Cookie Baking Sheets

If you’ve ever experienced panic while opening your oven mid-bake to perform a cookie sheet pirouette - this section is for you. The reason behind a well-intended recipe instructing cooks to rotate or flip baking sheets in a hot oven is because ovens have hot spots. As Greenspan puts it, “You’re trying to avoid overbaking one cookie while another is underbaked.” Fair enough.

But here’s where her take is delightfully contrary: she doesn’t actually believe rotation is necessary for most cookies. She says, "It's like cookie sheet gymnastics! I’m not convinced it’s healthy for the cookies.” The vast majority of cookies bake in 10 to 12 minutes, and opening your oven in that short window can cause a dramatic temperature drop (as much as 15 degrees). The swing in temperature can be more destructive to holiday baking than an oven's potential hot spot.

Her preferred method? Whenever your schedule allows, "Bake one sheet at a time, centered in the oven, and leave everything alone."

Preheat Your Oven for 15 Minutes Longer Than the Indicator Signal

If your oven runs wildly uneven or you’re baking something that requires a longer bake time, you will need to rotate your baking sheets though. Greenspan offers a small workaround to ensure your dessert survives when you open the oven door: "After the oven beeps to announce that it is preheated, give it 15 minutes more. I find this helps me not lose as much heat when opening the oven door."