One Hour ofWet Baking SodaIs Not Nearly Enough!

I got an email from a man not too long ago
who stated that he had a big problem with
carbon build-up on the bottom of his oven.

His solution? Make a paste out of the baking
soda, and put it soaking wet on the bottom
of his oven for one hour.

One hour is not nearly enough! The baking
soda method of cleaning your oven works very
very slowly!

In addition to soaking with baking soda for
one hour, he went to the hardware section of
a store and bought some kind of paint scrapper
to get the black stuff off.

He said it worked and I suppose it would. Since
baking soda is a mild abrasive, using baking soda
with a paint scrapper might work.

For many different reason, I would be totally
unwilling to use a paint scraper on my oven. For
one thing, it could harm the oven surface. For
another thing, it is total overkill.

I wrote back to the man and suggested that soaking
the bottom of the oven with baking soda paste over
a 3-day period might make more sense. I suggested
that he re-wet the paste each and every day.

While 3 days is good, a week might be even better.
In any case, you are really not done soaking the
baking soda with water from a spray bottle until
the black carbon stuff wipes off easily with a cloth.

If it doesn't wipe off easily, you are not done yet.
That's my personal experience. Other people have
experienced the same thing.

Commercial oven cleaning solutions exist for a reason.
If you cannot wait a few days for your oven to be clean,
the best solution is probably to use commercial oven
cleaner.

Sometimes, when you are moving out of an apartment, you
do not have a few days to clean your oven. In that case,
commercial oven cleaner may be your best bet.

Every problem has an ideal solution. Baking soda is not
the ideal way to clean your oven if you only have 24 hours
before the job has to be done.

Ed Abbott