We've been neglecting the oven for some time now, and we've had a few spill-overs in the last month. I decided it was time to see what the self-cleaning oven could do the other night.
The oven heats itself up to extreme high temperatures (the manual warns to remove the racks so they will not discolor and become hard to slide in and out, as well as remove all items from the stovetop and surrounding area). It burns off any crusted-on gunk in the oven, and when the cycle is complete and the oven has had time to cool, you simply wipe the ash out with a damp cloth. Pretty cool!
Well, to start with, the self-clean cycle set off the smoke detectors after a few minutes. The initial burn-off lasted less than half an hour, and the smoke cleared out. After the oven had been cleaning for two hours, I heard a fan kick on in the kitchen; the over-the-range microwave automatically turned on the hood vent, in an effort to cool itself down. I should have thought to turn this vent on to begin with (it would have caught much of the smoky air coming from the oven), but there must have been some thermal sensor in the microwave oven that decided that it was getting too hot for it's comfort. It's almost scary that our electronic appliances are smarter than we are!
