Okay, my oven is actually self-cleaning, but it does require a person to make it happen. When I do it the smoke alarms go off. I won’t tell you how long it has been since it was cleaned. What should I do?
Turn off the smoke alarm and open the windows?
I believe most self-cleaning ovens recommend not using chemical oven cleaners. Maybe you could remove some of the larger crispy bits by hand and then turn on the self-cleaning.
Yes, the surfaces of most self-cleaning ovens could be damaged by oven-cleaner products, check your owner’s manual if you have it.
Use a damp sponge to wipe out the surface stuff if it’s heavy. Most of the nasty smoke is from burning oil.
If you have a fan, open a window anywhere in your home. Open another window nearest the oven and place the fan so it blows out the second window. Best to do in moderate weather, of course. It will create a cross-draft that will pick up and exhaust a lot of the smoke. Trick is to use windows on different sides of the oven, if you’ve got 'em.
Even if you turn off the smoke alarm (which you can do only by taking out the battery or unplugging it from house current), if you generate enough smoke to trigger it you will still want to open windows.
Once you get it clean, self-clean it again before it gets too dirty and you shouldn’t have the same problem, won’t have to pre-clean, etc.
The above post gets my ‘right person answering the right question’ award.
To help clean the worst of it, you can heat (at around 300 F or so) a small amount of full-strength ammonia solution in an oven-safe glass dish for about an hour. This won’t hurt the finish, but will make it a lot easier to clean off the heavier grease and baked-on nastiness inside. Afterwards, you can run the self-cleaning cycle, and not have as much smoke produced. Obviously, you should remove the dish of ammonia first!
The non-toxic way is to spray the oven with water, put about 1/2" of baking soda on it, and spray again with water. Let it sit overnight and then wipe off.
Then go out and buy a teflon cookie sheet and put it under everything you bake. It’s a lot easier to clean.
Thank you so much. I must do this before my mother comes to visit. I also must have the carpet cleaned.