The owners manual will always say to clean the oven and door glass with a damp sponge and mild detergent every time it gets fat or food spilled on it. However most owners don’t follow this advice and let dirt become carbonized and baked on. We describe below how we professionally clean your oven door glass.
Oven door glass is the most obvious place your oven gets dirty. But cleaning it can be difficult and result in permanent damage. Therefore you if don’t understand how to clean it correctly we would advise that it be left to professional trained oven cleaners like ourselves.
Types of oven door and how we remove them
Firstly the door hinges are released and the door is removed from the oven. Usually a hinge-catch locks the hinge in place and the door is lifted out. An exception to this are Smeg ovens which require pins to be inserted.
In order to clean all the sides of the glass we must first be able to dismantle the door. Usually this is a pretty straight forward task. However on cheap or badly designed ovens it can be difficult or impossible. If in doubt look we under the cleaning section of your owners manual. If there is no mention of taking the door apart then it shouldn’t be dismantled.
The amount of glazing sheets depends on the oven model. Most cookers are either double or triple glazed. Older Smeg models and Pyrolytic self cleaning ovens are quadruple glazed (these will require a service engineer to take them apart).
Vented oven doors
Most ovens are vented top and bottom to allow a cooling flow of air. This prevents the transmission of heat to the outside of the oven door. The reason for this is to stop people burning themselves on a hot outer door. The downside of this type of door is that grease and fat can easily get between the glass sheets. This means the glass must be removed for cleaning.
Sealed oven doors
Some oven doors are sealed at the top which prevents grease and spilled food from dripping between the glass sheets. In this case no internal dirt should be present therefore there shouldn’t be any need to remove the glass sheets for cleaning.
Slide and Hide oven doors
Neff produce ovens with ‘slide and hide’ oven doors, as seen on The Great Britsh Bake Off. These doors really require a service engineer for their removal. On the other hand they are top sealed so shouldn’t have anything more than dust between the glass panes.
Types of oven door glass
Low-E heat reflective glass
The first question we ask is whether the internal glass is Low-E or Low Energy. This type of glass has a heat reflective film coating. This means extra care must be taken to avoid damage during cleaning. Our usual method is to steam the dirt off in our dip tank.
Doubled sided safety glass
This is the most common type of oven glass. It can be removed, cleaned and replaced with either side of the pane facing the oven.
Single sided safety glass
This is a cheaper type of safety glass which has only be toughened on one side. This means that one side of the glass is under greater surface tension than the other. There will be writing on the glass saying something like ‘this face towards oven’. The reason for this is that heating the wrong side of the glass could result in the glass shattering
How we clean the removed oven door glass
With normal oven door glass a sharp razor blade can be used to carefully scrape the off the top layer of grease. Next a detergent is sprayed onto the remaining dirt and left for 15 mins. A new razor blade is then used to scrape off the softened dirt. Next a mixture of detergent and fine glass abrasive cream is used to remove the last of the dirt. Finally the glass is rinsed, dried and polished.
We use only non-scratch scouring pads to clean oven glass. Avoid using normal green and yellow sponge scourers or brillo pads as they can scratch your glass.
Glass scratches are not only unsightly but it can lead to the glass being weakened and shattering. Also dirt will get into the scratches which cannot later be removed.
As you can see there is quite a lot to know about cleaning oven glass. Our professional training and years of experience mean you can have a sparkling clean oven and the piece of mind of a job well done. Click here to see our customers reviews, see our price list or make a booking .