Guide series · Viking ovens
The oven heat series: when a Viking misses the number on the dial
4 parts 4 published about 16 min in all
Nearly every temperature complaint arrives in the same sentence: it used to cook the way I expected and now it does not. What sits behind that sentence is four quite different faults, and they want four different answers — which is why they are four articles rather than one.
Part one is the one most people arrive looking for. Calibration is a real adjustment and it fixes a real problem, but only one kind: an oven that is wrong by the same amount every time. Part two is the opposite case, where the cavity climbs and then gives up short of where it was asked to go. Part three is about time rather than temperature, because a gas oven that takes three quarters of an hour to be ready is failing in a way a thermometer will not show you. Part four is about where the heat goes once it is in there.
Read them in order if you are not sure which one you have. The first two questions in part one — is the gap the same every time, and does the oven get there eventually — will send you to the right part of the series within a minute.
- How do you calibrate a Viking oven, and when is it not a calibration problem? Calibration corrects an oven that is wrong by the same amount at every setting, and nothing else. Two questions sort out which kind of temperature fault you have before anybody adjusts anything.
- Why does my Viking oven stall 50 degrees short? An oven that climbs and then gives up below the number you set is a different fault from one that is simply reading wrong, and you can usually hear which of the two you have.
- Why does my Viking gas oven take forever to preheat? A gas oven that takes far longer to be ready than it used to is failing in a way a thermometer will never show, and the part that usually explains it is the one that decides when the gas is let through.
- Why does one side of the tray burn? Uneven browning is about where the heat goes rather than how much of it there is. Plenty of these end with nothing replaced and something loaded differently; the rest point at the door, the fan or the seal.
