Kings Bakehouse
Bread bakes at 230–260 °C, cake at 160–180 °C, and the tray comes out when the centre reads 93–99 °C — not when the crust looks right.
A wet loaf — anything toward the 80% hydration end — goes into a 230–250 °C oven with steam for the first 20 minutes. Steam keeps the surface of the dough soft while oven spring happens; without it the crust hardens in the first minutes and the loaf stays small and tight.
A dry baguette or roll wants the opposite: 240–260 °C with little or no steam, so the thin crust crisps immediately. The two settings are not interchangeable — steam on a baguette gives a leathery crust, and a dry oven on a wet loaf gives a dense one.
Cakes sit far lower, at 160–180 °C. Above 180 °C the outside of the batter sets before the cake has risen, and the crumb comes out dense and tunneled. If a cake regularly sinks or tunnels, the oven setting is the first suspect — the full failure map is in Why Cakes Go Dense, Dry or Sunken (/why-cakes-go-dense-or-dry).
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Doneness is an internal temperature, not a colour. Lean bread is baked through at 96–99 °C at the centre; enriched or butter breads are done at 93–95 °C, and their sugary crusts darken long before the middle is ready. An instant-read probe into the centre of the loaf gives the answer in seconds.
Meringue work has its own numbers: egg whites reach soft peaks at about 71–74 °C and hard peaks at about 82 °C. In a 20 °C kitchen a weak-looking bowl is usually under-whipped, not over-whipped — the fix is more whisking, not new eggs.
Resting finishes the bake. Cake rests 10–15 minutes in the tin, then 30–60 minutes on a rack; bread needs its own cooling before slicing. Cutting either warm compresses the still-soft crumb, and that damage does not come back.
Further reading