Ovens are brilliant for conjuring up cakes, pizzas, and all things super delicious! Your glass oven door will certainly appreciate a gentle but effective cleaning every now and then – which will let you gaze on as your cupcakes rise and pizza crust crisps up. We’ll show you the best way to clean an oven door.
Pizza, cakes, frozen foods – your oven is the one-stop-shop for all these culinary delights. Depending on how often your oven is used, you’ll need to give it a deep clean more or less regularly. After all, after cooking on the hob, you also wash the pans and pots you used to cook with.
It’s not just the inside of an oven that needs cleaning every now and then. The oven door also needs to be cleaned regularly. This not only gives you a better view of what's going on in the oven when it's running, but also optimises its performance, since dirty seals increase the oven's energy consumption.
In addition, dirt and crumbs that carbonise due to the heat can affect the taste of the dishes you prepare in the oven – smoked food is delicious, but probably not this way! Learn how to clean your glass oven door, even if you don't have a special foam or spray cleaner for ovens at hand.
Professional or commercial cleaners will do the best job at cleaning an oven door. It is typical, though, that just when you’re in the mood to do a deep clean (or rather, when you’ve got the time), you’re just out of oven cleaner. Just in case, you can resort to these home remedies for oven door cleaning:
- Bicarbonate of soda
Conventional bicarbonate of soda is suitable for a variety of household cleaning jobs. It not only ensures that baked goods rise beautifully, but also dissolves dirt and stains. Crusted crumbs in the oven or on the oven door can be removed with a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water. Mix a few teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda with enough water to make a thick paste. Apply it to the affected areas with a spoon or a clean toothbrush. Leave it on for at least half an hour and then wipe the oven and door with a damp cloth. Follow up with a dry cloth - and you're done. Pro tip: For particularly stubborn dirt, you can leave the paste on longer or even overnight. This way you'll get the oven clean without scrubbing and scratching the glass.
- Shaving foam
If you don't have bicarbonate of soda in the kitchen, normal shaving cream will do. Simply spray the oven door, the sides, and the bottom of the oven, and let the foam soak in. After about 30 minutes, simply wipe it out with a damp cloth and heat the oven once without food. That way, the smell of the shaving cream will dissipate, and you'll ensure that your next cake, pizza - or whatever you prepare in the oven - will arrive on the table without any nasty hints of chemical scents.
- Baking powder
No bicarbonate of soda? Don’t despair – baking powder works just as well and has proven to be an all-rounder in the household.
For cleaning the oven door, you can either make a thick cleaning paste or an easy-to-spread spray cleaner from baking powder and water. Depending on the desired consistency, mix two tablespoons of baking powder with one tablespoon of salt and the desired amount of water. Mineral water enhances the cleaning effect because it makes the baking powder foam. Simply put your homemade spray cleaner into a spray bottle (for example, one that you normally use for moistening plants) or work the oven door with the paste on a sponge or cloth. After it has worked, simply rinse with clean water and dry.
Whether you use a specialised, commercial oven cleaner or a DIY solution, in both cases heat intensifies the effect of the cleaning agents you use to clean the oven. So, after you’ve preheated the oven for your cake, use the oven's residual heat after baking to give it a scrub with the cleaning method of your choice. This saves you time and energy since you don't have to heat up the oven to improve the cleaning agents’ effect.