To insert a side rant on the subject: this is why IoT cooking gizmos like smart pand get a terrible reception. Because there's already a full set of tranditional techniques for cooking, most of which are fairly easy to learn with time.
For everything else there is pressure cooker (which by the virtue of its design is extremely high tech/precise instrument).
So I'm guessing you are mostly using gas ovens in France?
The French chef and molecular gastronomist Hervé This, for example, developed "6X degree C" eggs, that the, long-term cooking of egg at exactly, say, 65 degrees C.
You can order them at, for example, Blue Valentine in Paris, says his review at http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-valentine-paris .
Coal and wood fired ovens usually have a huge thermal mass so once it's up to temperature with a particular size fire it will stay there.
Edit: the gas oven doesn't predate the thermometer, but traditionally is set by "gas mark" rather than a thermostat. Old recipies would say "gas mark 7" etc.
Having said that, gas ovens are a pain to use until you've got used to the one you've got. I've never had one where the actual temperature of the oven matched the gas mark it was set to. Typically you'll have to benchmark it with an oven thermometer and then adjust whatever the recipe says to fit.
Gas hobs however, you can take from my cold dead hands. I'd rather use a camp stove than an electric hob. Nothing beats instantaneous heat adjustments.
You can get that with a good induction stove. I still prefer gas, but induction is pretty good. Other advantages of gas are for example the ability to use non-flat pots (woks or similar). On the other hand it's much harder to clean.
Personally, when I bake things in modern ovens, I don't use the thermometer either. Sort of, because they still have a thermostat of course. But in general you really don't need a thermometer for baking.
In general, you can put in things with a large surface-to-volume ratio at almost any point, like pizza, pretzels, or buns. If you put them in early they just get done faster. With larger things like bulky bread loaves, I would wait a bit until the oven cools down somewhat because they are at risk of heating up slowly on the inside while the outside is already done. Personally, I find the bread variants with larger surfaces more appealing, so I don't have a lot of experience with the bulky ones. With pastries it depends on the temperature tolerances of their components.
Really, I would suggest you try it out yourself. I found that intuition works pretty well, even for me as a city-dweller with a non-agricultural background.
For example, I've baked a pizza enough times _with_ a timer and specific, but different temperatures set that now I need neither and can just adjust the temperature to what I'm used to and know that the pizza only needs a certain amount of time. The end result should be a certain way. As long as it gets there correctly then whether there's a timer/no timer it should be fine.
This involves more than just the temperature of the oven. When baking bread you want long gluten chains, so you need the bread. But for most pastries you don't want that so you need to distribute the fat without building up the gluten chains.
https://vintagecookbooktrials.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/a-sho...
> The many different kinds of pastry which are made in Britain today have evolved over the centuries from a crude flour and water dough mixture invented by the Romans. The paste was wrapped around meat and game before roasting and was not intended to be eaten. It served only to retain meat juices and aroma.
Knowledge of cooking was passed down from generation to generation via schools, guilds and families. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Thousands of years of trial and error passed down. People measure by sight, sound, touch and smell. For example, there are multiple ways to guess steak doneness. Simmering is visually different from boiling which is different from a rolling boil. If you're frying something in a pan, you can guess the temperature by sound. If you're making a stew or braise, it's done when the meat breaks apart. Doesn't matter what the cookbook says about exact times because environment and cooking equipment is different for everybody. Water boils before 100 C at high elevation. I moved to an area with high humidity in the summers and all my baking recipes from home failed.
With practice, you also build an intuitive sense of doneness. For example, I've cooked enough "black on the outside, raw on the inside" chicken to know how hot the heat should be and how long it should take--even without a thermometer or a timer. Like others have mentioned, sometimes you just have to cook a proxy item or sacrifice a piece.
One of the big differences between new cooks, and experienced cooks is that people who have cooked for a while are constantly tasting, touching and inspecting their food. New cooks tend to follow recipes word for word and only taste at the end. Then they get surprised when something is under/over cooked and under/over seasoned.
Lastly, I think previous generations had different expectations of consistency and quality. Modern society is hyper-precise. Traditional recipes have a huge margin for error.
I started using a bread thermometer. Experimented with various breads and converged on trying to make a great basic french boule. Doing this at 6000 feet in Colorado in a conventional oven is challenging.
I could write at least 4000 words about bread, so I'll cut to the chase. I eventually got rid of the bread thermometer because I had my recipe down. The trick is measuring quantities (by weight, not volume) and using the same recipe, oven configuration and oven temperature every time. Once you figure out what works, that is. Once you eliminate variables and all you're left with is temperature or 'doneness' it's easy to just use time instead of temperature.
So to answer your question, I think they used to use trial and error, then consistency. Or perhaps a baker who taught the apprentice the exact method, perfected over time.
With a crisp loaf, you can just knock the underside and you'll get a reasonable idea of whether it's done. But a few fails (or not perfect results) will eventually get you to where you need to be.
Just for fun, here's some more detail: If you're interested in bread in your conventional oven, I'd highly recommend the awesome experience of making bread out of just flour, salt, yeast and water - a classic french recipe. And then hand knead it. Don't fall to the temptation of adding an egg yolk, sugar or olive oil just yet. It's like adding cocaine to soda. Of COURSE it will be more popular. But get the basics right first.
A few tips for your conventional oven: Get the thickest pizza stone you can get and a cast iron pan. Put the stone on a middle rack and the cast iron pan on the lower rack.
Use a moister dough (70 to 80% IIRC) and calculate the percentages of water vs flour based on weight. A scale is essential and a huge time saver. Make a nice wet dough and learn how to knead it. This will give you that wonderful crumb with big spaces. Learn about when to knead and when to rest. For better results, make an autolyse where you just lightly knead only the flour and water first and let it rest for 30 minutes before adding the yeast and salt and kneading. Sounds odd, but it gives amazing results. Calvel's technique (Julia Child's guru).
Preheat the hell out of the stone in the oven AND the cast iron pan under it. Boil a kettle full of water. Put thick gloves on for this next part.
When you put the bread into the oven, put the moist dough directly on the hot stone. Then immediately pour just a few ounces of the hot kettle water into the pan under the stone and shut the oven as soon as you can (with a face full of steam). You now probably realize that filling the kettle all the way saved you from having to tip the whole kettle into the oven and getting a nice steam burn. And those gloves were handy weren't they?
What you've just done is simulate a commercial baking oven in your crappy kitchen oven. The bread will rise suddenly and then the crust will start forming after about 7 mins. Let it get nice and crisp. Check it at around 30 to 45 mins depending on your oven temp. Use a bread thermometer. Take it out when it's 195. Flip upside down on a bread rack and let cool. Resist, resist, resist the urge to bust it open because you'll damage the fragile loaf at this point. After about 10 mins you can cut it if you want to serve hot bread.
When I was in my bread phase, my wife and I would eat hot bread fresh out of the oven with mature cheddar that would soften on the hot slices with red wine late at night.
The base receipe I used was 240 g flour, 0.35 l water, 5 g yeast, salt
And the most important part, 12 hour leavening time, no kneading and a cast iron pan preheated in the oven. Makes for very easy baking.
If you are really curios to see it done, I'd suggest visiting a live history museum - the only one I know of is outside of Indianapolis, though. They put the research in to make it historically accurate, including the cooking you see them do, and employees are generally knowledgeable about their roles.
They didn't. The concept of food or beverages that taste the same, no matter when or where they're made is an extremely modern invention. It really only came about in the late 19th and early 20th century when industrial processes, statistical techniques, and physical sensors became well developed enough to reasonably guarantee the same outcome over and over again, for run after run. Prior to that, people just accepted a greater level of inconsistency in their foods, because that's all they'd ever known.
If you were a professional baker, or you had to bake all your own bread, I'd think you would become intimately familiar with the performance of your oven, with the characteristics of your leavening agent (probably a continually refreshed yeast or sourdough culture that you'd keep going for years), and with the local flour.
Although, since I'm currently reading through the Aubrey-Maturin novels, I wonder if the predominance of all these puddings they are always eating had something to do with them being easier to prepare reliably, compared to baked deserts.
I used to live round the corner from a baker that was still doing most steps by hand. I could tell from the shape of the rolls whether he was up long the day before. Practice makes you pretty consistent, but there are so many factors influencing the result that it's never exactly the same - which is part of the appeal.