Technique: Preheat Oven [edit]

[edit] About Preheat Oven

Before baking or roasting something in an oven, you usually want to bring it up to temperature in advance, this is known as preheating. There are a few reasons for the this, the first is that the timing on most recipes is calculated assuming your starting to bake at a higher temperature. If it takes 10-15 minutes for your oven to get hot, you will need to add this time to your total cooking time.
Food may also not cook properly if you do not preheat. Some recipes rely on a high heat at the beginning to brown food and then lower the temperature later.