PSA: Check the oven temp at the Elmsford community center before baking there

I used the big convection oven at the Elmsford community center last Saturday for a charity bake sale. The dial said 350 but my cakes took almost 20 extra minutes to bake, and the tops came out darker than usual. After three batches, I finally put my own thermometer in and it read 405 the whole time. Someone else had baked bread there the week before and complained about burnt crusts, so this probably isn't new. The center doesn't have a maintenance log for the ovens, and the staff just shrugged when I told them. If you're planning to bake there for an event, bring a thermometer and check it before you trust the dial. Has anyone else run into this at a shared kitchen and how did you handle it?

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nancyramirez15d ago

Is it just me, or do shared spaces always seem to have something that's just slightly off and nobody bothers to fix? Like, it's never the big stuff, it's always the small things that mess up your whole day. I've noticed this at my gym, the treadmills all say a certain speed but they actually run faster or slower, and the front desk just looks at you like you're crazy. People get so used to "good enough" that they stop checking if things are actually right. It's a real shame because you're doing something nice for the community, and the equipment just lets you down. A simple label or a logbook would take five minutes, but nobody's willing to do that small step.