How to clean in between oven door

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Your oven door is a plate glass window into every bubbling, roasting, broiling morsel you cook. Because of that it's important to keep it clean. How else are you supposed to admire your hard work? Here's how to clean your oven door so well that your cooking dinner looks like it's on display in a department store window. P.S. This is 100% chemical free cleaning.

For the past mmmmmmmmmm I'm gonna say 3 years now, I've had to open my oven door to check on how things are cooking inside. This because my oven door was so dirty with baked on grease and guck that I couldn't see through it.

So what finally prompted me to clean my oven door?

Bread videos.

I'm sure you've seen them. They're all over Instagram, if you follow the inordinate amount of bread baking Instagram accounts that I do. Time lapse videos of newly formed bread as it rises and cooks from beginning to end in the oven - all shot through the glass oven door.

You can see the loaf expand at the beginning of the baking, stretching until it finally can't take it anymore as it explodes at the scoring line, the bread's ear curling back perfectly all in a tidy 1 minute video.

I thought maybe I'd like to do one of those videos. Then I remembered my oven door. My camera would never be able to shoot through the guck. A shotgun would never be able to shoot through the guck.

I grabbed my screwdriver (about 5 months after deciding to clean my oven door), and got cleaning. 

How to Clean Inside the Oven Door Glass

Cleaning the 2 inside and outside panels of glass isn't a bad job at all. If you can clean a window you can clean an oven door. It's cleaning between the glass that's a pain.

Yes.  You are going to have to take your oven door apart and possibly remove the door entirely, depending on what type of oven you have.  Please don't leave. It's easy and a very rewarding job. If you like seeing those vacuum marks on your sofa or carpet you're going to love this.

If you want to do a complete overhaul on your range, here's how to clean stainless steel.

1. Open your oven door and clean the inside glass. Mine was far beyond being able to clean with glass cleaner and a cloth.  Yours will probably be too dirty for that too. The easiest way to clean the inside of the door is to use a razor. You can get these little paint scraper razor gadgets at any hardware store that will literally scrape away all the guck with almost no effort at all.

2. Then I clean it again with a damp Ultimate cloth made of MiraFiber® (which is even finer and better than microfibre.)  Repeat those same steps on the outside oven door, but chances are you won't need the razor blade for that, just a MiraFiber® cloth or glass cleaner and a regular cloth.

Once you clean the inside and the outside panes of glass it's time to start your video camera because you're about to take your oven door apart and the video is either going to be proof that you're a handyperson extraordinaire OR something will go horribly wrong, but inevitably be funny - either way you're going to want video for sharing on social media.

3. All oven doors can be removed pretty easily. Open the door of your oven and take a look at the hinges. Are they as disgusting as mine?? I bet they're not. Don't feel bad. I've trained myself for years to be this level of disgusting.

Depending on the make of your oven the door will either have a little tab you can pull out by hand, or a different kind of tab that you need to use a screwdriver to pop out.  

4. Stick your screwdriver into the back of the tab and push it forwards. This unlocks the hinge.  Do it on both hinges of the oven door.

5. Now close the oven door to the point where it won't close anymore and then lift it straight up. The door should pull out very easily.*

*Some oven doors don't need to be removed in order to separate it for cleaning the glass in between. Check your manual.

6. This is where things might be different for you. Google how to disassemble your oven door to clean the glass.  The information might be in your oven manual, but it might not. For me, I had to remove countless screws and bolts that were holding the door frame together.

Keep track of all your screws and bolts by putting them on the floor and kicking them under the cupboards.

Or put them in a small dish. 

7. Once all the screws are removed carefully separate the front and the back of the door. Your glass panes might be loose so pay attention to that.  Once your door is apart, marvel at yourself and the filth of it.

8. Now you can clean the inside of the oven door glass. Use the same scraping and MiraFibering technique you used for the outside of the glass.

9. Once it's cleaned and dried you can do everything in reverse, putting the door back together and lifting it into place.

I couldn't get a terribly good picture of just how filthy my oven door was because of the reflection on it but trust me - you could NOT see through it. At all. 

Instructions

1. Open your oven door and clean the inside glass. Mine was far beyond being able to clean with glass cleaner and a cloth.  Yours will probably be too dirty for that too. The easiest way to clean the inside of the door is to use a razor. You can get these little paint scraper razor gadgets at any hardware store that will literally scrape away all the guck with almost no effort at all.
2. Then I clean it again with a damp Ultimate cloth made of MiraFiber® (which is even finer and better than microfibre.)  Repeat those same steps on the outside oven door, but chances are you won’t need the razor blade for that, just a MiraFiber® cloth or glass cleaner and a regular cloth.
3. All oven doors can be removed pretty easily. Open the door of your oven and take a look at the hinges. Are they as disgusting as mine?? I bet they’re not. Don’t feel bad. I’ve trained myself for years to be this level of disgusting.
4. Stick your screwdriver into the back of the tab and push it forwards. This unlocks the hinge.  Do it on both hinges of the oven door.
5. Now close the oven door to the point where it won’t close anymore and then lift it straight up. The door should pull out very easily.
6. This is where things might be different for you. Google how to disassemble your oven door to clean the glass.  The information might be in your oven manual, but it might not. For me, I had to remove countless screws and bolts that were holding the door frame together.
7. Once all the screws are removed carefully separate the front and the back of the door. Your glass panes might be loose so pay attention to that.  Once your door is apart, marvel at yourself and the filth of it.
8. Now you can clean the inside of the oven door glass. Use the same scraping and MiraFibering technique you used for the outside of the glass.
9. Once it’s cleaned and dried you can do everything in reverse, putting the door back together and lifting it into place.

Notes

*The length of time this takes will depend on how easily your door comes apart and how familiar you are with how to do it.

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  Razor Blade Scraper

This job was almost as rewarding as ... you know when you finally pull a sliver out that you've been digging at for 15 minutes? That kind of rewarding.

If you're on my schedule you have a tidy 5 months before I start asking why you haven't cleaned your oven door yet.  I expect it'll be around the same amount of time before I get around to shooting a bread baking video.

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