Oven cleaning secrets?

Go to a local Dollar Tree store and get Awesome Orange cleaner. It will clean almost anyting. Spray it on, let it soak for a few minutes and then use a Scotchbrite pad on the oven stain. The stuff has a very strong smell, however. But it works.

Rusty Sacramento, CA

Donno what a "Dollar Tree" store is, but at least with that name as ammo...I've got a direction. Thanks, Rusty!

Dusty San Jose

minutes

They are a discount store where everything in the store is $ 1.00 or less.

Dollar Tree Stores in or near San Jose:

-445 Blossom Hill Road, San Jose, CA

-331 N Capitol Ave, San Jose, CA

-5546 Monterey Hwy, San Jose, CA

-1350 S Park Victoria Dr, Milpitas

-16975 Monterey St, Morgan Hill, CA

-1260 1st St, Gilroy, CA

-516 El Camino Real, Belmont, CA

If you are in San Jose, Costa Rica, sorry. ;-)

Rusty

Rusty wrote: ...

(:-o)!

Well, I have a "dollar store" within walking distance...but not the ones you've suggested. I did go there...and got NADA!

I've printed your note out, and will haunt at least 3 of them tomorrow...on the way back from Pacheco (helping a SP ranger with some nest box site selections...).

Thanks!

Dusty

Try Home Depot. I've seen orange smelling cleaners there.

Ginny

Rusty wrote: ...

I originally wrote to the group hoping to get a neat, clever solution such as: "To remove pine sap from hands, use a bit of Mayonnaise as you would soap." That one's been used by us for decades. I guess I was kinda hopin' that someone had a similar solution for a dirty oven.

Thanks for that "Dollar Tree" stores list, Rusty. I tracked down the closest one.

Went there. Found it (the "Awesome Orange"). Took it home. Put it to work.

Since I was curious about how well any of these things worked, I made a test case of my oven. I bake exclusively sourdough, and mostly bread. But I do make other SD things, Cinnamon Rolls & Schiacciata come to mind--and these often cook over and spill in the oven. Besides the occasional turkey, ham, and/or roast spill or spatter; I've been fooling around with an old-world cheese cake recipe. A lot of butter leaked out of the spring-form pan. And that was the reason I'd decided that it was time for one of my sesquicentennial oven cleanings...

Given that most of my bread bakes pretty near to 500F, and I do it often, the stuff that had been hiding under the hydration tray was truly nasty! So I divided up the areas, and tried a number of different cleaners:

• "Clean It!" from Carbona. Sez itz an oven cleaner that will also do BBQ grills. Tried it after 15 min, 2-hours, and overnight. On a 1-10 scale, where #1 is the best and #10 the worst, it got about a 7. It cleaned the easy stuff, but that was about all. However, it had the least noticeable smell.

• "Orange Pro," by USA Labs, Inc.; "The Big Orange," by Carroll Company; "Orange Clean degreasing foam," Orange Glo International, Inc.; and "Awesome Orange," by Awesome Products, Inc. Names and claims aside, all of them were about the same. Tried it after 15 min, 2-hours, and overnight. I gave them a 5-6 or so. While smells varied, most were "orangey", and quite pleasant.

• "Easy Off, Heavy Duty Oven & Grill Cleaner," by Reckitt Benckiser, Inc. Tried it after 15 min, 2-hours, and overnight. It did pretty good. Got off lots of caked and baked on stuff, and even got the window clean. I'd give it 2.5-3. The really tough stuff still needed a spatula for encouragement. Although a disagreeable smell, it wasn't overly strong or cloying. It was probably the strongest of the lot.

And now, , the winner!

• "Carbon-off!", heavy-duty carbon grease remover, by Discovery Products Corporation. Tried it after 15 min, and stopped there. Everything came completely clean. It did smell a bit, and had a pronounced "ammonia" 'nose', but again, not something strong enough that you'd try to duck from it.

All of these products had a spray setting, and the material would cling to vertical surfaces. Although the "Clean It!" and all of the orange cleaners did run and eventually puddle, they did leave the surface wet, so their cleaning "power" should have been viable.

The "Easy-Off" and "Carbon-Off!" did not run,

HTH someone. Dusty