I never preheat my oven. I am sure the scientists wonkish bakers here just fell over on the fainting couch clutching their pearls, but I just don't. And, note to said Alton Brown science nerds on why I want to start preheating my oven....Do.Not.Care. You can waste your time writing a 5000 word comment on why I should care, but trust me, I will make fun of you if you do.

Anyway, I never had a cake fail on me yet. There probably will be a first time, and yet, after 20 years of baking without preheating or barely preheating an oven,(As in, remembering to turn it on when I am 7/8's done with with preparing the batter/dough I still haven't had one baked failure yet.

I think, Kitchengoddess, that it probably depends on the result you're going for... I'm not sure how well, for example, french bread or neopolitan pizza would work out if you didn't preheat your pizza stone. OK by that I mean it won't work out, because those things take a long time to heat through.

I mean, you can still BAKE, I'll give you that, but the result won't be quite the same. It will be edible - good, even - but different.

Cakes might be a different story. The batter is already really moist. Maybe by heating slowly they have a little more chance to rise? I'm not sure. I have done only one recipe like this, but it turned out fine.

@kitchengoddess - does your oven reach temperature fairly quickly? Mine doesn't reach the desired temperature for a looong time. Do you alter your baking times as well?

It's quite common for pound cakes to start in a cold oven. My grandmother, who made the best, most velvety-textured cakes ever, always insisted on doing it that way. Food scientist Shirley Corriher says in older ovens, a cold start meant the bottom would heat first, allowing a good rise without forming a top crust until the oven got hot. However, she notes, newer ovens preheat differently and this may no longer be necessary. I don't think I can bring myself to make Nanny's cake any other way, though.

I've read cookbooks from the 1970s energy crisis that say preheating the oven makes little or no difference for most foods. I can see where it might for a pizza stone, though.

The rule of thumb is not to preheat the oven if the bake time is longer than the preheat time. The logic is that the food put into a cold oven will heat in tandem with the oven preheating.

There are exceptions: there are times when you'd want the heat from the a preheated oven to "set" the proteins (e.g. souffles) or to quickly brown skin of chicken or such.

But, otherwise, if you have a longer cook time than preheat time you won't have any problems.

I've never baked from cold apart from with a recipe that has a sachet of instant yeast in it, and I figured that the warm up time would give the yeast a head start, so the instructions made sense. The comment about not getting such a browned top on the cake makes a lot of sense too.
I think that you should probably make sure that your oven was preheated if some of the cooking process has already happened before you put the mix into bake - for example, if you've heated the liquid ingredients to melt, stirred them into dry, then they should go straight into a hot oven.

I do have a bread recipe that goes into a cold oven, and it works fine. TONS of oven spring. But not on a pizza stone - you want to bake in something that will conduct heat quickly.

One thing to remember is newer and higher end ovens often have a fast preheat. Viking is one in particular that will blast the oven with a REALLY high temperature while its heating up all the metal elements in your oven. This might affect your outcome.

That cake recipe is our family favorite of all time. I'm making it later today. It is awesome!

I'm with the post author, Molly's never steered me wrong!

That said, I've never tried this method. Let us know how it works out if you do!

Thanks, Stone Maison. Your comment makes perfect sense, but isn't something I've ever thought about.

Thanks everyone. From the comments it seems like a cold start would work as well as preheating for this particular recipe. And like some of you pointed out, Molly's recipes have never failed me before :) I will give it a try this weekend!
Mradula

On an old episode of Cooks Country, they made a pound cake and were very instant on NOT preheating the oven. The gradual rise in temperature does something awesome to the cake. I don't remember what it was, but Christopher has yet to lead me astray.

This is so timely because just yesterday I made a cake and forgot to preheat the oven. I wasnt' sure if it would be worse to let the batter sit on the counter for 10 min while the oven preheats or to put it in a cold oven. I went for the cold oven, but I put a pizza stone on the bottom shelf. My thinking was that the biggest issue with not preheating is that the bottom element is going to blazing at the bottom of your pan like a broiler cooking the bottom of the cake faster than the rest. So, I thought the pizza stone would block the direct heat? Results: the cake was crispy around the edges but delicious. I don't know if the crispy edges had anything to do with the cold oven or not!

I don't think this would work for me, but it's handy to remember if I ever get a decent oven...

My oven can only cook things that cook for 25 minutes or less and nothing thick (eg, poultry, bread, lasagne, most cakes). This is because my landlord installed the cheapest oven you could buy - an electric one with the element at the top. Obviously heat rises so this is pretty pointless unless all you wanna make is cookies or roast veggies.

As a result I permenantly have a pizza stone in my oven and always preheat for at least 20 minutes. Blegh.

Calm down, kitchengoddess! Yikes!

I have ONE recipe that calls for a cool oven. It's a basic pound cake recipe and it is WONDERFUL.