Why does my electric oven shut off when it gets to 500F?
June 2, 2016 1:19 PM Subscribe
My oven is a Whirlpool WGE32000 30 inch model. A basic econo apartment style range/oven. Why does it shut off when it gets to 500 degrees? And what I can I do about it?
It works normally as most electric ovens do with the little indicator light over the temp dial. The light goes on when you set a temp and the light goes out when it gets up to that temp. The thermostat and/or knob is not calibrated properly as it runs about 50 degrees hotter than the knob would indicate. I use an oven thermometer and check that visually and adjust the knob accordingly. Pretty standard stuff for electric ovens.
Here's the problem though - When it gets up to 500F I hear an audible click and the light goes off and the oven shuts itself off for about 10 minutes as it cools down. I realize this is some kind of safety feature but it really bugs me. I like to make pizza and artisinal sourdough bread in the style of Jim Lahey and Chad Robertson. I have ruined various loaves because the oven decides to shut itself off just as I've put the bread in the oven. If it was just a frozen pizza that would be one thing but when its a sourdough loaf I have spend a few days working on that really upsets me. If you are into bread and pizza as well you know that a HOT oven is really important. You need it to get a proper oven spring, you need it to char the crust a bit on your pizza, you need it to build a good crust on your bread, etc. Among serious home bakers it seems that the agreed benchmark for HOT is around 500 degrees and up. Is there a way I can adjust this shut off temp so that it kicks in at say 600 instead? Or is there a way I can trick my oven to run hotter than it thinks it really is?
The manual was, unsurprisingly, not helpful with any of this. Neither was my landlord. He wanted to answer my question with another question and tried to put it back on me: "let me ask you this, how many things are you really baking that need to be at 500 degrees?" He's an idiot. Then he said the numbers on the oven temp dial like 550 and 600 are like on a car's speedometer, it doesn't really go that fast (ie 220km/hr on a Dodge minivan)
It works normally as most electric ovens do with the little indicator light over the temp dial. The light goes on when you set a temp and the light goes out when it gets up to that temp. The thermostat and/or knob is not calibrated properly as it runs about 50 degrees hotter than the knob would indicate. I use an oven thermometer and check that visually and adjust the knob accordingly. Pretty standard stuff for electric ovens.
Here's the problem though - When it gets up to 500F I hear an audible click and the light goes off and the oven shuts itself off for about 10 minutes as it cools down. I realize this is some kind of safety feature but it really bugs me. I like to make pizza and artisinal sourdough bread in the style of Jim Lahey and Chad Robertson. I have ruined various loaves because the oven decides to shut itself off just as I've put the bread in the oven. If it was just a frozen pizza that would be one thing but when its a sourdough loaf I have spend a few days working on that really upsets me. If you are into bread and pizza as well you know that a HOT oven is really important. You need it to get a proper oven spring, you need it to char the crust a bit on your pizza, you need it to build a good crust on your bread, etc. Among serious home bakers it seems that the agreed benchmark for HOT is around 500 degrees and up. Is there a way I can adjust this shut off temp so that it kicks in at say 600 instead? Or is there a way I can trick my oven to run hotter than it thinks it really is?
The manual was, unsurprisingly, not helpful with any of this. Neither was my landlord. He wanted to answer my question with another question and tried to put it back on me: "let me ask you this, how many things are you really baking that need to be at 500 degrees?" He's an idiot. Then he said the numbers on the oven temp dial like 550 and 600 are like on a car's speedometer, it doesn't really go that fast (ie 220km/hr on a Dodge minivan)
Yeah, overriding your oven’s safety cut-off sounds like a *terrible* idea: It’s probably there for a reason.
posted by pharm at 1:38 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by pharm at 1:38 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
how well is it ventilated? have you tried placing a fan to blow cool air around the back? assuming it is some kind of safety cut-off it may be that somewhere outside of the oven enclosure is getting too hot.
(i'd be tempted to see what i could open up and look at. i suspect it's made with some cheapo mechanical thing that will switch/bend at a particular temp and is unadjustable. but you might find that it's stamped with a temp (like this), and that it is switching out of spec (ie it's actually marked as higher than 500F). in which case you could replace it with no real risk.)
posted by andrewcooke at 1:45 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
(i'd be tempted to see what i could open up and look at. i suspect it's made with some cheapo mechanical thing that will switch/bend at a particular temp and is unadjustable. but you might find that it's stamped with a temp (like this), and that it is switching out of spec (ie it's actually marked as higher than 500F). in which case you could replace it with no real risk.)
posted by andrewcooke at 1:45 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
There is a temperature sensor somewhere in your oven, probably at the end of a stiff wire. If you bend it to take it out of your oven (so it hangs out the door), you will be able to get higher temperatures. I have done this for Pizza Reasons, but you need to be careful -- other parts of the oven may not have been built for higher heat, and it's totally possible to melt part of the fixtures on top of the oven (like the rings around the elements), and you absolutely want to make sure there isn't anything sitting on top of the oven or in the drawer or anything. Stay in the kitchen the entire time, have a fire extinguisher handy just in case, but I for sure made a lot of 600F+ pizza in an oven by doing this. Worth noting though, not all ovens can actually produce the kinds of heat you need. Pick up a $20 infrared temperature gun if you don't have one already, and check how hot your stone is actually getting.
posted by Jairus at 1:57 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Jairus at 1:57 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think this falls under my "how will you explain this in court" rule. When you're on the news and they're saying "this person burned down their building by bypassing the oven safety cutoff, they said they were trying to make pizza". What would you say if you were watching?
posted by bongo_x at 2:22 PM on June 2, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 2:22 PM on June 2, 2016 [13 favorites]
Your oven is not the right sort to do the task you're asking it to. If someone told you they were going to run the Dakar rally in an off-the-sales-floor Nissan Leaf, you'd rightly tell them they had the wrong tool for the job. Can you make it work? Probably. Does that make it a good idea?
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 2:37 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 2:37 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]
Your landlord is wrong. Ovens settings are not like speedometers. Your oven is not operating properly. Don't start messing with wiring though. Get a professional, if possible. The temp gun for your baking stone(s) is a good idea.
posted by zennie at 2:39 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by zennie at 2:39 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
Alternatively, I'm sure you have friends who'd be happy to let you make fresh breads in their properly functioning ovens.
posted by zennie at 2:42 PM on June 2, 2016
posted by zennie at 2:42 PM on June 2, 2016
He's an idiot. Then he said the numbers on the oven temp dial like 550 and 600 are like on a car's speedometer, it doesn't really go that fast (ie 220km/hr on a Dodge minivan)
He might be an idiot, but that idiot might be right. Sometimes, oven and other machine manufacturers will just use off-the-shelf existing parts when they assemble their shit. It's cheaper to make n 600F knobs, than it is to make x knobs that go to 450 and y knobs that go to 600. I mean, I've replaced apartment stove knobs with generic ones. This easily could have been done here.
Yeah, overriding your oven’s safety cut-off sounds like a *terrible* idea: It’s probably there for a reason.
Namely it will totally void your homeowners/renters insurance if you do this! This happened to a friend of mine who subsequently went on to opening a pizza shop. But yeah, small electrical fire, and he had to pay cash to fix the whole mess. Nightmare situation.
I mean, Jarius has the technical correct answer to your question. That is indeed how to override your temperature shut off on your stove...but you're a renter, and you've made your landlord aware of your desire to do this. Anything going forward I would file under "unwise." I mean, its a total bummer.
You could try doubling up on pizza stones too to make a little pizza chamber, like the one depicted here. I've even seen ones that will put a pizza steel in the middle chamber, and just surround it with stone everything else. It will take forever to heat up, but should retain that heat better than the oven itself.
posted by furnace.heart at 2:45 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
He might be an idiot, but that idiot might be right. Sometimes, oven and other machine manufacturers will just use off-the-shelf existing parts when they assemble their shit. It's cheaper to make n 600F knobs, than it is to make x knobs that go to 450 and y knobs that go to 600. I mean, I've replaced apartment stove knobs with generic ones. This easily could have been done here.
Yeah, overriding your oven’s safety cut-off sounds like a *terrible* idea: It’s probably there for a reason.
Namely it will totally void your homeowners/renters insurance if you do this! This happened to a friend of mine who subsequently went on to opening a pizza shop. But yeah, small electrical fire, and he had to pay cash to fix the whole mess. Nightmare situation.
I mean, Jarius has the technical correct answer to your question. That is indeed how to override your temperature shut off on your stove...but you're a renter, and you've made your landlord aware of your desire to do this. Anything going forward I would file under "unwise." I mean, its a total bummer.
You could try doubling up on pizza stones too to make a little pizza chamber, like the one depicted here. I've even seen ones that will put a pizza steel in the middle chamber, and just surround it with stone everything else. It will take forever to heat up, but should retain that heat better than the oven itself.
posted by furnace.heart at 2:45 PM on June 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
Right, so. My uneducated guess as to what is happening is that your oven has a two thermostats: a regular one connected to the control panel (part 7 in this diagram), and a safety thermostat that cuts off the power if the oven gets too hot (part 8 in this diagram). Presumably what is happening is that the safety thermostat is tripping at too low of a temperature; this would be the audible click that you hear. At lower temperatures, though, the conventional thermostat is regulating the temperature correctly. I suspect that if the safety thermostat is replaced, you might have better luck getting the high temperatures.
In your situation, I would probably say to my landlord, "Look, this is important to me, so I'll pay to call in a certified Whirlpool repair technician to take a look at it and see what they say," to which he would hopefully reply "Hey, it's your money." Calling in a technician will probably run into money once you factor in parts and labor—I would guess that it'd be upwards of $100, depending on how easy it is to find the parts for your oven—but it may be worth it to you.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:50 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
In your situation, I would probably say to my landlord, "Look, this is important to me, so I'll pay to call in a certified Whirlpool repair technician to take a look at it and see what they say," to which he would hopefully reply "Hey, it's your money." Calling in a technician will probably run into money once you factor in parts and labor—I would guess that it'd be upwards of $100, depending on how easy it is to find the parts for your oven—but it may be worth it to you.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:50 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah, this sounds like the sort of thing where if you want to do this, coordinate with your landlord on paying for either a repair of the existing oven (like Johnny Assay suggests) or for a new oven that will actually reach the temperatures you desire. Anything else and you're quite literally playing with fire.
Another thought that doesn't require modification to the oven; I wonder if you prop open the oven door slightly if that will keep it cool enough to keep the safety thermostat from going off while still maintaining the oven compartment hot enough to do the baking you want to do.
posted by Aleyn at 3:06 PM on June 2, 2016
Another thought that doesn't require modification to the oven; I wonder if you prop open the oven door slightly if that will keep it cool enough to keep the safety thermostat from going off while still maintaining the oven compartment hot enough to do the baking you want to do.
posted by Aleyn at 3:06 PM on June 2, 2016
Response by poster: Thanks for your responses so far all. Its good to get some perspective sometimes before you go too far down the DIY rabbit hole. As a few have said its likely not a good idea to try to override the safety features of an oven.
After doing some more googling I actually found this from Jim Lahey himself:
"For electric ovens that have a broiler in the oven, turn off at 500°F (260°C) or so, place the stone on a rack about 4 inches from the top heating element (not the 8 inches called for with gas) and preheat, on bake, at 500°F (260°C) for the usual 30 minutes. Then, to boost the heat of the stone without the oven’s elements shutting down, open the oven door a few inches and leave it ajar for about 30 seconds. Some of the ambient heat will escape, but the stone will stay just as hot. Now close the oven door and switch to broil for 10 minutes to heat the surface to the maximum. Open the door and slide the pizza in to broil. Because the stone is so close to the element, you may need to pull the rack out a few inches to get the pie centered on the stone; do it quickly and don’t worry about losing too much heat. With the door closed, broil for roughly 2 minutes longer than specified for gas—until the crust is adequately charred but not burnt and the toppings are bubbling. Remember, it’s the visual cues that count most. Check a couple of times; the pizza will cook quickly."
Doesn't help me with bread but it definitely gives me hope for my next crack at pizza.
posted by Fred Wesley at 3:30 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
After doing some more googling I actually found this from Jim Lahey himself:
"For electric ovens that have a broiler in the oven, turn off at 500°F (260°C) or so, place the stone on a rack about 4 inches from the top heating element (not the 8 inches called for with gas) and preheat, on bake, at 500°F (260°C) for the usual 30 minutes. Then, to boost the heat of the stone without the oven’s elements shutting down, open the oven door a few inches and leave it ajar for about 30 seconds. Some of the ambient heat will escape, but the stone will stay just as hot. Now close the oven door and switch to broil for 10 minutes to heat the surface to the maximum. Open the door and slide the pizza in to broil. Because the stone is so close to the element, you may need to pull the rack out a few inches to get the pie centered on the stone; do it quickly and don’t worry about losing too much heat. With the door closed, broil for roughly 2 minutes longer than specified for gas—until the crust is adequately charred but not burnt and the toppings are bubbling. Remember, it’s the visual cues that count most. Check a couple of times; the pizza will cook quickly."
Doesn't help me with bread but it definitely gives me hope for my next crack at pizza.
posted by Fred Wesley at 3:30 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
Is there any reason you can't call up Whirlpool and ask? When I worked for one of their major competitors, we often got calls from people who wanted to change/alter the way certain things worked, or who wanted to know why certain settings operated the way they did (or to override them). Any time we could make a customer happy, we'd do it - - with the very obvious caveat that we wouldn't do or suggest anything hazardous.
posted by VioletU at 3:37 PM on June 2, 2016
posted by VioletU at 3:37 PM on June 2, 2016
Johnny Assay: "a safety thermostat that cuts off the power if the oven gets too hot (part 8 in this diagram)."
FYI: those thermo disk switches are in my experience pretty accurate tripping within 10% of the rated value consistently. You might be able to get a hotter trip by switching it out a few times hoping for a unit that reads high (especially if your current unit is tripping low). Also keep in mind that the safety switch is reading at the hottest part of your oven which could be significantly hotter than where your oven thermostat is located.
Your actual oven control is almost certainly adjustable; would probably only cost you a service call. We'd calibrate every control we replaced. A 50F differential isn't uncommon even with a brand new control. It takes a while because you have to wait for the oven to cycle 4 times initially and then a couple times every time you make an adjustment. I'd recommend people bake a few batches of oatmeal cookies or something else cheap they were familiar with afterwards.
posted by Mitheral at 4:30 PM on June 2, 2016
FYI: those thermo disk switches are in my experience pretty accurate tripping within 10% of the rated value consistently. You might be able to get a hotter trip by switching it out a few times hoping for a unit that reads high (especially if your current unit is tripping low). Also keep in mind that the safety switch is reading at the hottest part of your oven which could be significantly hotter than where your oven thermostat is located.
Your actual oven control is almost certainly adjustable; would probably only cost you a service call. We'd calibrate every control we replaced. A 50F differential isn't uncommon even with a brand new control. It takes a while because you have to wait for the oven to cycle 4 times initially and then a couple times every time you make an adjustment. I'd recommend people bake a few batches of oatmeal cookies or something else cheap they were familiar with afterwards.
posted by Mitheral at 4:30 PM on June 2, 2016
Best answer: Everyone worrying about it going over 500 and not being designed for it... Most new ovens have a self cleaning function, which gets the oven to 8-900f. They're built to take it.
I've experienced similar issues before, trying to achieve the same goal. The answer was always that the oven was a hunk of crap.
I would not recommend modifying or messing with the oven, even though lots of people have online. I, like someone else above, had my roommate light my kitchen on fire during cooking stupidity. We had to pay out of pocket for EVERYTHING, and it almost burned the entire apartment down and stopped just short of doing serious damage to the building.
Honestly i'd buy something like this or explore barbecue pizza before fucking with my oven. The only oven modification i'd personally approve of is disabling the electric door lock during the cleaning cycle, on an oven that has a cycle that already hits >600f. Messing with the thermostat isn't something i'd do, and this is coming from someone who has helped build gas powered shopping carts and has generally done a lot of very stupid things because they sounded fun at the time. If this was a "would you eat this" sort of question, i'm the one who almost always would say yes, and.... no.
posted by emptythought at 4:49 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]
I've experienced similar issues before, trying to achieve the same goal. The answer was always that the oven was a hunk of crap.
I would not recommend modifying or messing with the oven, even though lots of people have online. I, like someone else above, had my roommate light my kitchen on fire during cooking stupidity. We had to pay out of pocket for EVERYTHING, and it almost burned the entire apartment down and stopped just short of doing serious damage to the building.
Honestly i'd buy something like this or explore barbecue pizza before fucking with my oven. The only oven modification i'd personally approve of is disabling the electric door lock during the cleaning cycle, on an oven that has a cycle that already hits >600f. Messing with the thermostat isn't something i'd do, and this is coming from someone who has helped build gas powered shopping carts and has generally done a lot of very stupid things because they sounded fun at the time. If this was a "would you eat this" sort of question, i'm the one who almost always would say yes, and.... no.
posted by emptythought at 4:49 PM on June 2, 2016 [6 favorites]
For whatever it's worth, if you end up messing with your oven in whatever way, PLEASE make sure you have renter's insurance or homeowner's insurance before you do.
posted by Slinga at 8:53 PM on June 2, 2016
posted by Slinga at 8:53 PM on June 2, 2016
A Baking Steel instead of a stone would concentrate the heat so your 500F gives you the result of a much hotter oven.
posted by Dragonness at 9:52 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Dragonness at 9:52 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
I was just about to suggest getting an Uuni, if you have any outdoor space at all. My friend has one and loves it.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:00 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by en forme de poire at 12:00 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Uuni looks very very cool. I already have a Weber kettle grill and a big honkin offset barrel smoker in the backyard. I'm not sure how many more cooking toys I can justify at this point while still living in an apartment.
posted by Fred Wesley at 9:49 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Fred Wesley at 9:49 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
If you have a decent grill, seriously delve in to the black hole of guides to BBQ(with a steel, or a stone especially) pizza making. You can not only get very close to an oven, but also go in all kinds of different, and tasty, directions with it. Honestly the results will be far superior to an electric home oven anyways, even with a stone or running on self clean mode.
posted by emptythought at 11:51 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by emptythought at 11:51 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 1:28 PM on June 2, 2016 [8 favorites]