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Perhaps this has been discussed before, but I now see my wife's refusal to pre-heat the oven in a new light. "The notion of pre-heating it then putting the food in for a specific number of minutes is for morons who don't know how to cook. You know, people like you," she tells me. Ok, that's a paraphrase, but you get the idea. She avoids pre-heating just because she's in a hurry, but I now see it as perhaps analogous to "warming up the car" by letting it idle in your driveway for 10 minutes.

I suggested she cut the oven off a few minutes before the food is done, which would slightly extend the cook time but would save energy. We could call that, oh, I dunno, FASsing the oven. Shoot, you could FAS the oven several times during the cooking of the food. Wait, actually, ovens already do that I think.

Perhaps salmonella or its ilk are the reason we don't play around with cooking, though.

It should work. I actually do FAS it at the end when it's pizza time. The main issue would be just knowing your specific oven's abilities. You can't address that in a recipe for mass-consumption.

Preheating the oven is required for baked goods like bread and such because of the leavening agents (yeasts or baking powder) and the melting points of the various fats used.

If your just heating up a casserole or a roast, preheating probably isn't that important. If your making bread, cookies, or other items - your results may not be edible.

your oven already hypermiles - it does the P&G technique.

Pre-heating is important for nearly everything you cook because your oven (and the food cooking in it) won't be at the proper temperature or at a steady temperature until it is pre-heated. Once the oven reaches the proper temp, it will turn off and coast until a certain threshold is reached and then it will fire up again. For baked goods preheating is absolutely essential, but even roasting meats you will find that you will get inferior results if you don't pre-heat. You can get away with a short pre-heat however, when you broil, since the element needs to stay on during the entire cooking time. Y

ou can extend your oven's P&G's by putting a baking stone in the oven, but you can't get around the pre-heat just like you can't P&G if you don't first accelerate your car.

That's exactly how we run our oven... no preheating and we always turn it off a few minutes before the food is done. As we only eat out about once per month this makes a noticeable impact on our monthly power bill (last month's combined gas and electric bill was $97 for a 2-story house in the desert).

Preheating the oven is required for baked goods like bread and such because of the leavening agents (yeasts or baking powder) and the melting points of the various fats used.
I have never had that problem, not from my homemade bread to boxed brownie mixes to homemade pumpkin bread. Perhaps it is because we eat organic... the only fat you'll find in anything we create comes from real unsalted butter or olive oil (no transfats or lard, etc.) and the yeast is from my own starter (made from nothing but whole wheat flour and water... it's about 3 months old now and going strong).

I frequently find myself teaching people how to utilize the
long time-constant of ovens and electric ranges by pointing out
how there's a lot of residual heat which will not only finish
the cooking process after power-off, but keep the food warm for
quite a while thereafter. Only potential downside is drying
things out if they're kept warm too long.
.
This is probably why so many people are gas-stove snobs -- they
can't deal with the ramp-up and ramp-down of electrics.
.
_H*

My wife taught me to hypermile the oven long before I heard of hypermiling.

For instance, if we are going to make a frozen pizza (it's rare... my wife's very healthy; a lacto-pesco-ovo-vegetarian:) in fact), we will turn the oven on, setting the oven to the proper temperature, immediately throw the pizza in the oven, and set the timer for 2 minutes longer than it specifies on the package. The oven usually chimes that it is preheated just a minute or two prior to the pizza being done. Voila!

Is there a way to track my oven's mileage on cleanmpg.com? :p

This is probably why so many people are gas-stove snobs -- they
can't deal with the ramp-up and ramp-down of electrics.
I grew up with gas, learned to cook on gas, moved to college and had an electric stove... I don't think I had a single meal from that stove that wasn't over cooked, I just could not get the hang of it after 2 years.

and now I work for the gas company... that would be like a guy that works for coke drinking a pepsi :p

I bake artisan breads made from my own starter (no commercial yeast) and the oven must be hot when they go in because steam has to be introduced for a crackling crisp crust. You can't make steam with a cold oven and spritzing the dough with water just doesn't cut it.

My range is new; pilotless ignition; very well insulated; and my natural gas bill is around $20 a month....maybe five bucks of that is actual product - the rest are fees, taxes, and service charges.

Hobbit, if I could afford it, I'd have an electric oven for baking and a gas range for cooking. With steam injection for the oven, of course.

I've got a copy of the bread bakers apprentice, and getting the oven hot enough beforehand is just one of the things you need to deal with when baking bread. I typically use a spritzer bottle for my steam. I need to get back into making bread... it's just time consuming, and time's not something I generally have much of ;).

We're going with an induction cooktop in the house that we're building. From what we've seen and read gas is 55% efficient, reg. elect. is 65 % and induction is close to 95%. The "burners" don't heat up, the pot or pan does though. They had a demo at a store and they put a paper towel down and then a pot of water. They brought the pot of water to a boil, and by the way was really fast and then pulled the pot off and the paper towel wasn't burnt and the guy almost at the same time put his hand on the element. Pretty cool. It doesn't heat up the kitchen light reg. elect. or gas does.kevin

I've got a copy of the bread bakers apprentice, and getting the oven hot enough beforehand is just one of the things you need to deal with when baking bread. I typically use a spritzer bottle for my steam. I need to get back into making bread... it's just time consuming, and time's not something I generally have much of ;).

I agree about time consuming since some of the breads in that book can take three days to make. But do try the Pain a L'ancienne baguettes. About the easiest formula in the book because you just mix the dough, stash it in the fridge overnight, and bake the next day when you have time. They are heavenly - but working with a very wet dough takes some patience.

Anyway, baking bread is environmentally friendly even if you do preheat your oven. No plastic bags, paper bags, ties, tape, or chemicals. Lower transport costs, too. Bread doesn't have a long shelf life. Flour does.

Yep, I've done those. And the Ciabatta, Italian, bagels, French, and pizza dough. I've been meaning to do a nice rustic sourdough, but just haven't had the time to cultivate the yeast. I do have some nice containers for it (my Dad got into this big time, and gave me some nice large containers for rising the dough). I'll be doing pizza dough today at some point. I was looking to get some nice troughs for making sub rolls like subway, but they turned out to be too expensive.

Thankfully, my electric oven has a sensor to let us know when it reaches proper temperature. With my bad hearing, I have to turn down the volume on the TV so I can hear it when it goes off. My wife has learned to conserve energy with the oven when she makes her cornbread. She puts it in a cast iron skillet. When the cornbread is nearly done she turns off the oven because the cast iron stays hot for quiet a while. We try to do as much cooking as possible in the microwave or toaster oven. I make my iced tea using water from the coffee maker instead of boiling water on the stove. We cook fish, chicken, and individual biscuits in the toaster oven.

Hope you don't mind me asking,
but what exactly does she allow herself to eat?

My guess would be anything that grows out of the ground.

Hope you don't mind me asking,
but what exactly does she allow herself to eat?

lacto = she allows dairy products
pesco = she allows fish and seafood
ovo = she allows eggs
vegetarian = she allows all vegetables, fruits and nuts

In other words she doesn't eat mammals or hatched fowl but their byproducts and everything else is fair game.

You can find lots of weird labels for diets. I just discovered that my wife and I are pollo-pescotarians, or pesco-pollotarians if you prefer, as we allow for fish and fowl but no red meat. However, as we can go for days on end without eating any meat at all you could also call us semi-vegetarians, or flexitarians.

I think those are all overly-complicated ways to say "no red meat". ;)