350°F to Celsius, What Setting Should Your Oven Be?
350°F is 177°C — which you can safely round to 175°C or 180°C. Home ovens already vary by ±10°C from one dial to another, so rounding won't change how your food bakes.
The formula, if you want to check it yourself
To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius: subtract 32, then multiply by 5, then divide by 9.
(350 − 32) × 5 ÷ 9 = 176.7°C
It's the same formula for any American oven temperature — handy if your recipe lists 375°F or 400°F and you want the exact value rather than a memorized reference point. For a quick estimate without a calculator, you can also subtract 30 from the Fahrenheit number and divide by two: that gives 160°C for 350°F, close enough to get your bearings before checking the precise figure.
Reference points for the most common oven temperatures
American recipes almost always use the same handful of settings. Here are their equivalents, rounded to the most practical degree:
- 300°F = 150°C (low oven, slow baking)
- 325°F = 163°C
- 350°F = 177°C (the most common, for cakes and cookies)
- 375°F = 191°C
- 400°F = 204°C
- 425°F = 218°C
- 450°F = 232°C (hot oven, for pizza or crusty bread)
Why 350°F comes up so often
It's no accident that so many American recipes — cakes, cookies, muffins, casseroles — land on 350°F. It's the temperature that lets batter or dough cook through before the outside burns, while still developing enough color for a good crust. Go lower, and baking drags on with a pale result; go higher, and the outside sets before the center finishes cooking. 177°C sits right in that sweet spot, which explains its popularity across cookbooks.
Why rounding isn't a problem
A home oven, even a recent one, doesn't hold a perfectly stable temperature — it swings a few degrees around the setting, and the gap between the displayed dial and the actual air temperature can easily reach 10°C. Aiming for exactly 177°C gets you nothing more than aiming for 175°C or 180°C: the baked result will be identical. What matters more is the rack position and the baking time given in the original recipe — keep those as written, and only convert the temperature.
If your oven has a convection mode, note that American recipes specifying "conventional oven" assume a traditional setup: in convection mode, generally lower the converted temperature by about 20°C, or go by your appliance's own guidelines.
My oven doesn't offer 177°C: what should I set?
Most Celsius ovens adjust in steps of 5 or 10°C. Between 175°C and 180°C, choose based on what you're baking: 175°C for things that need to stay moist and cook gently through the center (a thick cake, banana bread, brownies), 180°C for things that should color a bit faster (cookies, muffins, a gratin). Either way, keep the recipe's baking time as your starting point and check five minutes before the end.
If your oven is graded in thermostat numbers from 1 to 10, 350°F falls just under thermostat 6 (180°C) — that's the setting to use.
What bakes at 350°F, and roughly how long
As a reference, here's what an American recipe at 350°F typically expects — times vary with pan size and the recipe itself, but the orders of magnitude help spot a conversion error:
- Cookies: 10 to 12 minutes
- Muffins and cupcakes: 18 to 22 minutes
- Cake in a 20-23 cm round pan: 30 to 35 minutes
- Banana bread or loaf cake in a loaf pan: 55 to 65 minutes
- Casserole: 30 to 45 minutes
If your cookies are brown in 6 minutes or your cake is still liquid after 45, the problem isn't the recipe: it's almost certainly the oven's actual temperature, worth checking with a thermometer.
A dial that isn't always accurate
The number shown on your oven's dial isn't always what the air inside actually reads: a 10 to 20°C gap between the two is common, especially on older ovens. If your cakes consistently bake too fast or too slow compared to the recipe's stated time, a cheap oven thermometer placed on the middle rack often reveals the real temperature and lets you adjust the setting accordingly, rather than blaming the recipe. Letting the oven fully preheat — 15 to 20 minutes, not just until the beep — also helps avoid discrepancies when you put the dish in.
One more thing to watch: convection ovens (fan-assisted) bake faster and more evenly than a traditional oven, which is why some recipes specify "conventional" or "convection" alongside the temperature. If you're unsure which mode your oven is in, it's better to watch the bake visually for the first few minutes than to rely solely on the recipe's original timer.
Once the temperature is set, the ingredients still need converting — the US to metric cooking conversion chart is built for that.