The Oven

I was thrilled to get a stove with an oven. I had to go to Kigali last Tuesday to get the things I needed to be able to bake. I couldn’t wait to begin. I set to work on Wednesday. That is when I discovered that the oven does not have a thermostat. It has a timer, but no temperature regulator. It has to be lit with a long match since the electric ignition does not extend to the oven. That wasn’t a problem, but there is no way to set the temperature. The only options are high flame or lower flame, with no idea of the actual heat level. I feel like I have stepped back into the pioneer days of the oven in the fireplace. Yes, I know that generations of women have successfully baked like that, but until last week, I never had. This was a new adventure.

To tell the truth, I felt a little like Goldilocks – too hard, too soft, just right. That describes my cookie experiments. The first were too hard. They were actually burned. The fire was too high and even at 7 minutes, they had charred bottoms. But the ingredients are expensive and hard to come by, so I cut off the bottoms and ate them myself and shared them with my house help, but I wasn’t about to expose my experiment beyond the house. I made some adjustments to the height of the baking racks and the setting on the flame and tried again when the burned ones were finally eaten. I over compensated. It took 40 minutes for the cookies to bake. They were still a bit “chewy” in the center, but at least they were not burned. I could share them beyond the house help. So on Sunday when I had a few visitors, I was able to serve chewy oatmeal cookies with the tea. Today, I made a few more adjustments and tried again. They worked! The cookies were perfect and in a reasonable amount of time. Now, if I can just replicate the conditions, I can bake cookies.

The next step will be to move to roasting meat – Mom’s Sunday roast and potatoes with carrots. That will not be as exacting as the cookies, I hope. If I keep this up, by the time I have house guests in September, I may be ready for them, or at least I will have conquered the oven temperature challenge.