I put a pot of water in the oven at $\mathrm{500^\circ F}$ ($\mathrm{260^\circ C}$ , $\mathrm{533 K}$). Over time most of the water evaporated away but it never boiled. Why doesn't it boil?
Thermodynamics – Why Doesn’t Water Boil in an Oven?
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Best Answer
The "roiling boil" is a mechanism for moving heat from the bottom of the pot to the top. You see it on the stovetop because most of the heat generally enters the liquid from a superheated surface below the pot. But in a convection oven, whether the heat enters from above, from below, or from both equally depends on how much material you are cooking and the thermal conductivity of its container.
I had an argument about this fifteen years ago which I settled with a great kitchen experiment. I put equal amounts of water in a black cast-iron skillet and a glass baking dish with similar horizontal areas, and put them in the same oven. (Glass is a pretty good thermal insulator; the relative thermal conductivities and heat capacities of aluminum, stainless steel, and cast iron surprise me whenever I look them up.) After some time, the water in the iron skillet was boiling like gangbusters, but the water in the glass was totally still. A slight tilt of the glass dish, so that the water touched a dry surface, was met with a vigorous sizzle: the water was keeping the glass temperature below the boiling point where there was contact, but couldn't do the same for the iron.
When I pulled the two pans out of the oven, the glass pan was missing about half as much water as the iron skillet. I interpreted this to mean that boiling had taken place from the top surface only of the glass pan, but from both the top and bottom surfaces of the iron skillet.
Note that it is totally possible to get a bubbling boil from an insulating glass dish in a hot oven; the bubbles are how you know when the lasagna is ready.
(A commenter reminds me that I used the "broiler" element at the top of the oven rather than the "baking" element at the bottom of the oven, to increase the degree to which the heat came "from above." That's probably why I chose black cast iron, was to capture more of the radiant heat.)