Baking is the easiest way to get a whole tray of tofu crisp at once, and the hardest to rush. A pan gives you one layer of pieces and constant control; an oven gives you four times as much tofu and no control at all once the door shuts. Everything that decides the result therefore happens before it goes in.
The good news is that the numbers barely move. Almost every baked tofu recipe we publish lands on the same temperature, and only the time changes with how you cut it.
| What you are baking | Temperature and time | How to set it up |
|---|---|---|
| Torn or cubed pieces | 200C, about 25 minutes, turned once | Pressed, tossed in cornstarch, single layer with gaps |
| Grated or shredded | 200C, about 20 minutes | Thinner shreds roast faster and far more evenly |
| Thick slabs or hasselback | 200C, about 30 minutes | Score the top so heat and glaze reach past the surface |
| Instead of pan-frying | 200C, about 30 minutes | Same marinade, no turning, browns on every side at once |
Why 200C, and why not hotter
200C is hot enough that water leaves the surface faster than it can travel out from the middle, which is the condition browning needs. Below about 180C the surface stays damp for most of the bake and the tofu dries out without ever colouring, so you get something leathery rather than crisp.
Going hotter does less than you would think and costs more than you would expect. Most marinades contain sugar, from maple, hoisin, teriyaki or simply from the tomato in them, and sugar starts to blacken well before tofu is done. At 220C or higher you are racing the marinade, and the marinade usually wins.
Our recipes are unanimous on this without having been coordinated. Tofu 'Chicken' with Spinach Sauce bakes at 200C for 25 minutes. Hasselback Teriyaki Tofu does 200C for about 30. Tofu Butter Chicken offers the oven as a straight alternative to the pan, again at 200C for about 30 minutes.
Press first, cornstarch second
The order matters and it is the step most often reversed.
Press the block before anything else. Fifteen minutes under something heavy is enough, and the reason is the same in an oven as in a pan: a wet surface cannot climb past the boiling point of water, so all the heat arriving goes into making steam rather than into browning. How long to press tofu covers when it is worth doing at all.
Then marinate. Then, immediately before the tray, toss the pieces in cornstarch. Tofu 'Chicken' with Spinach Sauce does exactly this: marinated pieces tossed until well coated, then spread out and baked. Cornstarch put on before the marinade simply washes off, and cornstarch is what turns a dry surface into an actual crust rather than merely a dry surface.
You can skip it. Expect a firmer, chewier result with a thinner shell, which is sometimes what the dish wants.
The tray is the whole technique
This is where baked tofu is usually lost, and it is entirely fixable.
Spread the pieces in a single layer with a gap around each one. Pieces that touch trap steam between them, and trapped steam is a wet surface, and a wet surface does not brown. It is the sheet-pan version of stirring a frying pan too often. Chili Cauliflower Wings states the rule about as plainly as it can be put: a single layer, and the pieces must not touch each other.
If it does not fit, use two trays. A crowded tray is not a slightly worse tray, it is a different cooking method, and no extra time rescues it. The pieces eventually cook through, but they steam the whole way and never colour.
Turn everything once, halfway. The underside is touching hot metal and browns by conduction, which is much faster than the hot air working on the top. Left unturned you get one dark face and one pale one.
Cut size decides the time, not the tofu
The temperature stays at 200C. What changes is how far the heat has to travel.
Torn pieces have ragged edges that dry out and crisp while the middle stays soft, which is why so many of our recipes tear rather than cube. Grated tofu is the extreme version. Tofu Gyros Wrap shreds the block with a potato peeler and says why in the step itself: thinner shreds roast faster and more evenly. It is nearly all surface, so it is done in about twenty minutes.
Thick slabs are the opposite problem, and scoring is the answer. Hasselback Teriyaki Tofu cuts fans into the block so that heat and glaze both reach past the outer few millimetres. Without the cuts you are baking a sealed brick and only the shell gets anywhere.
Baking or frying
They are not interchangeable, and it is worth knowing which you want.
A pan gives you a harder, more localised crust on two faces, and it is faster: Tofu Butter Chicken puts pan-frying at 8 to 10 minutes against about 30 in the oven. What you pay is attention, and the pan holds one layer.
The oven browns every side at once without being touched, handles four times the quantity, and is far more forgiving of a marinade that would burn in a pan. For anything going into meal prep, that settles it. Tofu 'Chicken' with Spinach Sauce is built around exactly that: one tray, five containers.
Sauce goes on after, not before
Anything sweet or wet added before the bake will either burn or stop the tofu crisping, so brown it first and sauce it afterwards, off the heat or in the last few minutes.
The same rule applies to storing it. Tofu 'Chicken' with Spinach Sauce packs its sauce separately from the tofu across five containers, because a crust sitting in sauce in the fridge reabsorbs the moisture and goes soft by the second day. Reheat baked tofu in a dry pan or back in the oven rather than a microwave, and see how long does tofu keep for how long it is worth keeping at all.