Self Cleaning Oven – Tricky Tip Thursday

I learned a lesson this week about my tendency to me on the lazy side. We ran out of whole wheat flour. Blasphemy! I know. But I suppose it happens to even the best of us. I know a more motivated person would’ve gone on a hunt for a highly rated white bread recipe or even taken their existing recipe and made a few changes to compensate, or better yet trekked the 8 blocks to the grocery store. But me? Why when I have my ever faithful Better Homes and Gardens cookbook sitting right on my shelf. We quickly whipped up their white bread.

Oh Better Homes, you steered me wrong! I have to say the loaves baked up nice and fluffy and they sliced well and even seemed moist. And that is where this seemingly good bread ended and we realized we might as well be eating cardboard. The stuff was completely flavorless! My poor kids! They all swarmed as it cooled on the counter just waiting for the tester slices. Then they were sorely disappointed. Usually freshly baked bread is met with “oooh”s and “aaah”s and at least one ravs about “the best bread ever.” They tried to be nice “oh this is good”, but all the honey and butter in the world couldn’t save this bread. I’m hoping that if I make french toast or similar out of it then maybe I can still get my labor’s worth out of it. Next time I’ll be running up to the store for real flour.

Lesson learned; being lazy does not help in baking. But I do know where being lazy can be helpful. Housework! No one should ever scrub harder than they have too. Elbow grease shmelbow grease! Enter my oven, which we used to bake said “bread”. Unless you use you kitchen as an extension of your closet and the oven just stores shoes, then odds are you have to clean it. Better odds are you don’t enjoy it and for some of you it probably only gets cleaned if you’re moving or your mother/mother in law comes to visit. It’s ok; I don’t judge.

Now I share my tip for making this incredibly lame task all the easier. Tin foil!

Before I cleaned my oven:

Eew! Charred cheese carcasses!

After I cleaned my oven:

Ooo shiny!

By putting foil in the bottom of my oven it catches all the ickies and when it needs cleaned I can just pull it out and put a new one in and my oven bottom stays clean.

Aren’t we glad we get to just throw this away rather than scrubbing out? I don’t tend to advocate disposable items, but given that I don’t have to do this very often and we throw away so little I don’t feel too bad about this little bit. Now quick everyone run off and line your ovens. You can thank me later.

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