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Because in a recipe it's impossible to specify cooking times without pre-heating. It's easy to say 10 minutes at 200 degrees, because this would be exactly the same for everyone. Every oven is different, so the time would be different depending on your oven, which the person writing the recipe can't know. So if the instructions on something like bread say pre-heat and bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees, they know the result would be good.

There is also the fact ovens warm up differently. If there is a heating element within the compartment where the food is being heated (especially above), this element gets way too hot and emits a lot of infrared radiation whilst heating up the oven. It does this because it wants to get to the set temperature as fast as possible. Once it gets there it only needs to maintain that temperature, which is much easier, so the heating element gets much less hot during this time. If you set something like a cake in the oven with a heating element right above it, best case the top of the cake gets baked more than the rest, worst case the top gets burnt before the inside cooks.

Then there's the fact whilst heating the temperatures inside the oven fluctuate a lot, some parts get hot fast, other parts take more time. When you have food that's sensitive to that you def need to preheat.

And there's a lot of chemistry going on, for example some foods get really greasy if they don't get hot enough while cooking. Whilst these food could be cooked with the temperature going from 50 - 150 degrees, the end result would be much better if it's just cooked at 200 during the whole process.

Now there are a lot of cases where this doesn't matter and if you know your oven well enough you can compensate. But there are plenty of legit reasons to pre-heat and you may even have better results when pre-heating, even if the end result was fine before.

So I agree, people should pre-heat and there are tangible benefits!

As a preheated oven, I can confirm this

Not necessarily tbh

The oven is quite cool on the other hand

I don't see any attempts to logic, it's just fewer steps:

1. turn on oven

2. put frozen pizza in

versus

1. turn on oven

2. wait

3. put frozen pizza in

As a person who YOLO'd baking recipes for years then finally actually followed the instructions and then created some bangin' cookies.. I agree.

This whole "follow the damn instructions" kind of has some value I think.

This is such a tiny hill to stand on, and I love it.

"Melt butter!? How the hell do I do that!?"

It's probably got to do with Americans measuring everything by volume, they have to melt it to measure it.

:3

I have microwaved my flour and did not turn into my baked good.

Please send help

I will literally kill you if you don't like the correct type of roman pillar decorations

What's funny is you're the only one who said "you moron"

I don't understand the "it's just a meme" logic. I've seen it used a few times to excuse whatever the meme says.

Imagine if the meme was "Stop signs don't make sense, I've got places to be, vroom vroom"

That's stupid and dangerous advice. This meme isn't dangerous, but it is stupid.

Obviously if there was a "Sarcasm rabbit" type meme, now it makes sense. I've never seen this meme image before, maybe that's what it's going for, but for now it's going to get shit on.

It's personal for me. My wife does this.

I don't care what you say. I stir-fry in a cold pan like a boss. I like my vegetables flopsy and oily thank you very much

It really depends on what you're doing. Consider a steak: If you put it into a cold pan and heat it up it's going to be 110% done on the inside before you get to temperatures that cause browning -- the protein is going to denature at ~70C, Maillard reactions occur at about 140-160C. So rule of thumb is if you want crisp or brown anything, you probably should blast it with some actual heat.

Then, when it comes to printed recipes: While every oven bakes differently they heat up even more differently, so if you want to give a baking time including the pre-heat is going to increase the error bar quite a lot.

And then there's stuff that needs proper rituals to turn out good, bread is probably the best example: Preheat, steam, falling temperature. Sure you'll get something edible if you put some dough in a cold oven but it's not going to be nearly as good, raise strangely, have structural issues, and forget about having a proper crust.

Oh, coming back to pans: "Hot pan, cold oil", as the Chinese say, is how you make iron pans non-stick: Without preheat not only is your steak going to be soggy, it's also going to be glued to the pan. If you use a teflon pan at the temperatures needed for a proper sear you'll quickly need to buy a new one while even bargain-bin iron pans are going to last generations.