Baking – My oven seems to cook the outside faster than the inside

It's important to distinguish between the two different types of "crisping" that both happen in bread.

The first is the Maillard reaction which is caused by the sugars reacting with proteins; this is facilitated by high heat and low moisture, and is what actually causes the bread to turn brown (and eventually to burn).

The other is simply the evaporation of water - drying it out - which can make the bread or crust noticeably "crisper" without any browning.

The Maillard reaction happens at 154° C / 310° F, which is much higher than the boiling point of water (100° C / 212° F), so the evaporation happens first. If you put a piece of bread in the oven at a low temperature and leave it there for half an hour, it will crisp up significantly but not brown.

So essentially it depends on what kind of "crispiness" you want. High heat will cause the Maillard reaction to occur and that will crisp it up faster, but you have to shorten the cooking time, otherwise it will burn. Lower heat, on the other hand, will crisp much slower - and if the heat is too low, you won't get any browning - but you can leave it in there for much longer and the crust will keep getting drier (i.e. crispier) due to the water evaporation.

The instructions are correct. High heat causes more "crispiness" in some applications, where almost all of the crisping comes from the Maillard reaction or caramelization of some kind, but bread is an exception because of its porousness and high water content (easy for water to evaporate).

When you're determining the doneness by time, you're doing it wrong :)

There are too many differences between individual fish to go just by weight, thickness, oven temperature, and time. The best way is to measure the internal temperature (stick a thermometer into the thickest part of the fillet); I like about 120 F (50 C) for salmon (carryover cooking raises the temperature a little higher after taking it out of the pan), but then it has to be good quality fish. You need to check early and often, because it can go from undercooked to overcooked fairly quickly. Now, like zanlok says, my experience is mostly with pan frying, and I'd expect using the oven would be a bit slower than using a pan because of slower heat transfer; so you should be a bit safer.

If you don't have a meat thermometer, an easy way to test fish for doneness is to look for translucency. Salmon can still be just a little translucent in the middle. Also, properly done fish flakes along the natural "seams". Another nice trick (which doesn't work for boneless fillets - sorry) is to find a bone in the thickest part of the fish: if it comes out fairly easily, then the connective tissues have mostly dissolved and it's done.

That leaves the temperature for your oven. I would go with very high - that way the fish gets the least possible time to dry out (which is going to be a big risk with this cooking method, I would think - unless you wrap your salmon in bacon or something like that). At a guess, I'd try 450 F (230 C).