Oven Temperature Converter

About the Oven Temperature Converter

Convert an oven setting from a recipe into the one your oven uses: degrees Celsius, degrees Fahrenheit, gas mark, a fan (fan-assisted) oven or an American convection oven. Type it the way the recipe writes it — 180, 350 °F, gas 4, 160 fan or even moderate — and see every scale at once.

Recipes print rounded figures, so the converter shows both: 180 °C is exactly 356 °F, which American recipes print as 350 °F, and the nearest gas mark is Gas Mark 4. The oven chart lists every gas mark, and the °C and °F settings in the steps oven dials use, with the fan-oven equivalent and the word cookbooks use for that heat.

Common uses

• Baking from a recipe written for another country’s oven: °F in American books, gas marks in British ones, °C and fan settings in European ones.
• Setting a fan-assisted or convection oven when the recipe gives a conventional temperature, or the other way round.
• Printing an oven conversion chart for the kitchen wall.
• Working out what “a moderate oven” or “a hot oven” in an old recipe means.

The formulas

• °F to °C: t/°C = (t/°F − 32) ÷ 1.8, and °C to °F: t/°F = t/°C × 1.8 + 32 (NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8). 180 °C = 180 × 1.8 + 32 = 356 °F.
• Gas marks (the Regulo scale of British gas cookers): Gas Mark 1 is 275 °F and each mark adds 25 °F, so Gas Mark n = 250 + 25*n* °F — Gas 4 = 350 °F, Gas 10 = 500 °F. Below that, Gas ½ is 250 °F and Gas ¼ is 225 °F.
• Fan and convection ovens move the hot air around, so recipes and cooker makers usually set them about 20 °C (Celsius recipes) or 25 °F (Fahrenheit recipes) lower than a conventional oven. Both are rules of thumb; your cooker’s manual may say otherwise, and both reductions can be changed here.

Why recipes and charts disagree by a few degrees

Recipes round. Oven dials step in 10 °C (sometimes 5 °C) and American recipes in 25 °F, so 350 °F (176.7 °C) appears as 180 °C, and 180 °C (356 °F) as 350 °F.

Printed charts also differ at a few gas marks: Gas 3 (325 °F, 162.8 °C) is printed as 160 °C or 170 °C, and Gas 9 (475 °F, 246.1 °C) as 240 °C or 250 °C. The chart here rounds the exact value to the nearest 10 °C and shows the exact value beside it, so you can see how close the neighbouring settings are.

What “moderate” and “hot” mean

Older recipes describe the heat in words. The chart pairs each gas mark with the word most cookbooks use:

• Very cool / very slow: Gas ¼–½ (225–250 °F, about 110–120 °C)
• Cool / slow: Gas 1–2 (275–300 °F, about 140–150 °C)
• Warm / moderately slow: Gas 3 (325 °F, about 160 °C)
• Moderate: Gas 4 (350 °F, about 180 °C)
• Moderately hot: Gas 5 (375 °F, about 190 °C)
• Fairly hot: Gas 6 (400 °F, about 200 °C)
• Hot: Gas 7 (425 °F, about 220 °C)
• Very hot: Gas 8–9 (450–475 °F, about 230–250 °C)

Cookbooks use these words loosely — when a recipe gives a number, trust the number.

Limitations

• Fan and convection reductions are rules of thumb. Some ovens convert the setting themselves (see the manual), and some recipes are already written for fan ovens (look for “fan” after the temperature).
• Many ovens run hotter or cooler than their dial says; an oven thermometer on the middle shelf shows what yours really reaches.
• Gas marks cover 225–500 °F (about 110–260 °C); hotter and cooler settings are shown in °C and °F only.
• Air fryers, combination microwaves and steam ovens follow their makers’ own guidance.

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