I just read an article in a reputable magazine (Family Handyman) supposedly written by a professional applicance repair person, who says that you should never use an oven’s self cleaning feature. According to him, the heat from the self-clean cycle can damage oven components, such as the circuit board and high-limit switch, can melt (yes “melt”) the bake/broil elements, or can even cause a house fire.
I am shocked to read this. I have routinely cleaned my ovens with the self-clean feature for many decades and have never had a problem. I find it hard to believe that oven manufacturers can sell a feature that has even a remote chance of causing such damage without the CPSC or other regulatory agencies getting on their case.
After we got our Kitchen Aid oven about 10 years ago, I looked up the model online and read a few horror stories about ovens of this same model getting damaged (circuit board only) by the self-cleaning cycle. Of course you only read about the ones that fail, and maybe it’s better to have it fail while it’s under warranty. Still, we didn’t try the self-clean the first few years… until we found out that our housekeeper had used it a few times in that period.
In my purely anecdotal sample of two, I’ve had two self-cleaning ovens and had to replace the bake element on both. I’ve never had to replace a bake element on any other oven. Take it for what it’s worth, but it seems logical that heating elements have a finite life expectancy, and that operating for long periods at high heat would reduce that life.
On the plus side, baking elements are typically easy to replace, but it’s usually best – and sometimes essential – to use proper replacement parts rather than some generic from Home Depot. Which makes getting a replacement – not to mention the prospect of a failed oven at an extremely inopportune time – perhaps a potential downside worth considering.
Self-cleaning ovens work by getting hot. Very, very, hot! Much hotter than anything you have roasted. They burn away any food particles and turn it into ash. Can be problematic if you have a dirty oven.
I wouldn’t put it on clean and then leave it unattended. There are easier ways to burn down you house, but this one works too.
I think the issue may be that the newer ovens have fancier circuit boards with more delicate components. The older ovens had simple electronics which were not as affected by the heat. I would guess that the high heat causes expansion and contraction of the circuit board, which could cause the delicate electrical components to break or the thin circuit lines to develop cracks. Ovens these days have touch screens with all kinds of fancy cooking and programming options. That means there’s basically a little computer running the whole thing. In the old days, the electronics would have been a simple thermostat and maybe a basic timer.
What I didn’t like about the one-and-only time we used the self cleaning mode was the slight scorching that happened on the top of the oven door. It’s visible only if the door is open, but it still bugs me.
We’ve had our stove/oven for almost 19 years. I doubt I’ve used self-clean half a dozen times, mostly because I tend to cook (for 2) in the toaster oven. But when I do use it, I scrap up as much as I can ahead of time and I run it on the shortest possible cycle - I think 3 hours. So far, so good.
Our last electric stove had a lot of electronics in it, including a built in microwave. It was flaky enough that we didn’t want to try running the clean cycle. Just starting it by accident turned into a major affair that ended up with us resetting the stove by unplugging it. The door was locked and it wouldn’t stop the clean cycle with any buttons that we pushed.
I used it once on our last range, a KitchenAid. It got blasting hot and damaged the facing on a drawer and cupboard.
I wanted a steam cleaning oven on our next purchase. Didn’t get it but I vowed to hand clean the new range more often and I’m proud to say it’s still shiny inside 3 years later.
I read an online story years ago about a guy who was trying to reverse-engineer the pizza from his favorite New York pizza joint. Not only did it involve years of testing to get the dough, cheese, sauce and pepperoni just right, he needed to cook it at pizza oven temps, which are upwards of 900 degrees, while home ovens top out at 500. He figured out a way to hack his oven so that he’d cook the pizza on self-cleaning mode without the door locking so he could get the pizza out before it turned to charcoal.
Not gonna dispute that, but one thing I’ve noticed about self-cleaning ovens is they tend to be better insulated than regular ones. Doesn’t mean the rest of the stove doesn’t eventually get hot from ordinary oven use, but it takes much longer and probably doesn’t get as hot. So, an advantage of self-cleaning ovens even for those who never use the self-cleaning feature.
In these days of microwaves and toaster ovens plus my outdoor grill, I didn’t have a lot of occasion to use my circa 1984 oven and broiler. I went though a baking phase and broiled salmon a few times. I don’t think it had a self cleaning function but it well might have. Even if it did, my oven didn’t really get dirty. What were you doing that made the oven so messy?
I can’t look at it anymore because it got hauled to the dumpster last week when they were demo’ing the kitchen for a remodel. I won’t have the new range installed for another month but it does have a self clean function…and WiFi.
Apparently, he’s also a speed-cuber (Rubik’s), which I didn’t know until reading his Wikipedia page. He held the US speed record back in 1981. But, yeah, I remember his quest for a home cooked pizza to rival La Vera Napoletana in NYC back about a dozen some years.
Jeez, didn’t know about all of his oven mishaps. He’s lucky he didn’t burn his house down or get seriously hurt. Seems like he could have invested in a moderately expensive pizza oven and spared himself all the grief to his kitchen oven. But maybe there weren’t all the consumer-level pizza oven options at that time that there are now. I bought a $100 pizza cooking insert for my kettle grill which works pretty well.
Yeah, I don’t remember anything like that being available for a reasonable price back then. The flood of pizza ovens seems to have come some time in the mid-2010s, maybe slightly earlier? The Oonis came out in 2012, it seems, so about then. I see posts by Jeff on pizzamaking.com that go back to 2005 regarding the cleaning cycle technique. I feel I became aware of him around 2007/2008.
I use my oven all the time. And when I roast meat, fat splatters, and it’s a pain to clean. So yes, I use the self-cleaning feature regularly. I wouldn’t buy a new oven without that. If it dies sooner, I guess that’s just part of the cost of the oven.
Have you ever cleaned a greasy oven by hand? Never again.
I also bake, and I suppose the incinerate feature is superfluous if that’s all you use the oven for. But it’s awesome if you roast or broil.
