My oven thermostat gave out in the middle of a big cookie order

It happened two days ago while I was baking 15 dozen chocolate chip cookies for a local coffee shop. The oven just kept heating past the set temperature, and I smelled burning sugar. I had to pull everything out fast and finish the batch in my old backup oven, which runs about 25 degrees cooler. Has anyone had to replace a thermostat on a commercial convection oven, and is it a job I can do myself?

3 comments

3 Comments

daniel_lane301mo ago

Gave out" sounds a bit dramatic. It just ran hot, right? You caught it and used the backup oven, so the job got done.

the_eric1mo ago

You saying "it just ran hot" is the whole problem. People brush off small failures until they cause real damage. That oven didn't just get warm, it was burning product. We accept stuff breaking a little bit as normal now, from appliances to software updates. It makes you fix things only when they're fully broken, which is always at the worst time.

the_laura29d ago

Got a buddy who owns a bakery downtown, same thing happened to him last year with his big deck oven. He figured he'd save a few hundred bucks and swap the thermostat himself. Took him three hours of crawling behind the unit, swore like a sailor the whole time, and when he finally got the new one in, the calibration was still off by 10 degrees. Ended up calling a tech anyway, who told him he wired it wrong and could've fried the whole control board. Some jobs are worth paying for just to keep your sanity and your oven in one piece.

-1