You will not phone anybody because the oven reads low. You will phone because a cake stopped working. They ring because something that always worked has stopped working, and it takes a while to connect the two.
The test
Buy an oven thermometer. Put it on the middle shelf. Set 350 and leave it a full twenty minutes past the preheat chime, because that chime is optimistic on nearly every oven ever built. Read it. Read it again ten minutes later.
A swing of about 25 degrees either side of an accurate average is normal and is how these appliances work. An average sitting 25 degrees low is a different matter and it is measurable rather than a matter of opinion.
What it normally turns out to be
- A drifting temperature sensor. An inexpensive part that drifts with age, and often the whole answer.
- Calibration. Almost every modern oven can be offset in the control. On a good number of these the repair is ten minutes and no parts at all.
- A door seal that has flattened. Warmth escapes, the element keeps working to replace it, and the oven never quite settles anywhere. Easy to see, easy to replace.
- A partly failed bake element. They can give heat without giving enough, which is more confusing than failing outright.
Things that are not the oven
Convection at a conventional recipe temperature. Dark tins rather than light. Two trays where the recipe assumed one. Opening the door to look, which costs you 25 degrees every time. Every one of those is a genuine cause, and each is worth eliminating before you pay somebody to look.
Worth correcting
An oven 25 degrees out is not dangerous and will not fail tomorrow. It is simply cooking everything at the wrong temperature, indefinitely, and the sensor is one of the cheapest parts in the appliance.
Call 866-264-9578 and tell us what your thermometer read. That is most of the diagnostics done.
