Oven – How to recognize if a dish cannot be cooked in a gas oven

I have used gas ovens with gas hobs, electric ovens with electric hobs, and electric ovens with gas hobs. By far the best combination is gas hob and electric oven. I'll break the pros and cons down:

Gas Hob

Pros:

• Heats up quickly
• Heat changes quickly - when you turn it off, it's off.
• Fine control over heat

Cons:

• Can create 'hotspots', but this is why you have different sized rings
• Can be fussier to clean
• Obvious danger of gas leaks, but modern safety systems mitigate this

Electric hobs are pretty much the opposite. They can be slow to heat and react slowly to heat changes (so if you want to go from a boil to a simmer you have to plan 20 minutes ahead). They also have the disadvantage of remaining hot even when they're turned off, which can be dangerous. Their only advantage over gas hobs is a more even heat across the pan, and being easier to clean.

Electric Oven (preferably fan)

Pros:

• Quick to preheat
• Even temperature throughout the oven
• Precise temperature control

Cons:

• None that I can think of

In contrast, gas ovens are slow to preheat, have marked zones of different heat (cooler at the bottom, hot at the top) and have coarser heat control. Also, because the flame is generally at the back of the oven, you can end up burning larger dishes that butt right up to it. All this builds up to make an unreliable oven (in terms of cooking results).

In conclusion, a gas hob/electric oven combo is the best because it gives you ultimate control over your cooking.

Dutch oven

(a proper cast iron one, mind you)

• Put your dutch oven on the stove top with the lid on, and turn on the heat until it gets hot
• Place the thing(s) to be baked inside (but not directly touching the sides or bottom; a little rack or other standoff will be helpful)
• Put the lid back on and turn the heat way down
• Wait. And this is a bit of a problem because it is hard to know the exact temperature, so baking is tricky.

This is also how one bakes over a campfire, though there you use coals and can get a reasonably repeatable temperature. Works better with cobbler than cake (I have seen cakes done this way, but more often I've seen them messed up), but it should do garlic bread just fine.

The pure mass of the iron serves to smooth out the uneven heating from the stove. This is also the reason a proper dutch oven has a lip on the lid: so you can put some coals on there to insure the lid stays properly hot too.