Butter Side Down

[Tom Bender]

Or in this case, topping side down. Wish I had a picture but was a little busy. Pizza slid off the pan onto the hot oven door!

Grabbed a spatula and retrieved the pizza minus most of the toppings which were sizzling onto the door. scraped up half of them and troweled them back onto our dinner.

The cleanup was interesting, if not fun. Oven door to the driveway and hosed off, lots of cheese and vegetables still stuck. Oven cleaner did it's thing. It took off lots of burnt stuff but left some older black specks, and the cheese and veggies. Scrub scrub scrub.

The drawer went to the shop for disassemby.

The oven door stood on it's corner and took an hour to drain. Must be some insulation like fiberglass in there. It's going to the shop this morning for close inspection.

Any chemists able to explain oven cleaner?

[Bill Dufour]

Oven cleaner is lye. Basic or caustic opposite, of acid. It will react with anything organic and aluminum. Concrete and marble should be okay with lye. Lye will disolve your skin and eyeballs if it touches them so wear goggles and gloves.
Bill D

[Tom Bender]

Yeah the door contains about a square foot of 1" thick fiberglass. After draining overnight it was pretty dry.

The drawer, as you probably suspect is a cheap piece of crap, like every other oven drawer. A $900 oven with a $9 drawer. Here's an opportunity for an oven maker to make a statement about quality.

Anyway it's all back in service now.

[Mike Soaper]

My sympathies for your pizza loss, RIP. (Rejoice In Pizza)

Since your oven is now off of the disabled list, and your pizza pan arm has had some rest it just might be time to make another pizza.

[Kev Williams]

--with the oven door saved and assuming pizza isn't on your endangered foods list, now's a good time to pick up a nice peel

[Bill Dufour]

I would run the oven empty and make sure no soap smell is trapped in the fiberglass. Also helps dry it out and prevent rust. I bought a "brand new" stove whose owner had dogs. It lived in the garage with the dog food and no box. Mice lived inside the insulation, could not get inside the oven.
I would not have bought it after I know what I know now. I had to remove the outer shell and throw out the insulation. Wash it all down with soapy water and install new high temp insulation. The insulation cost about $60 for twice as much as needed. Still smells fine today.
Bill D

[Tom Stenzel]

This needs to be taken in order. First the butter side down part.

Years ago I read an article about toast landing butter side down. It probably was on the 'net so it must have been true. The article meandered a bit, mentioning a myth-busters show that tossed pieces of toast in the air and found it landed butter side down 50% of the time. The flaw is that tossing toast in the air isn't normal behavior. Normally toast gets knocked off a table, where the leading edge will go off the table and begin to drop. The part still on the table doesn't. The resulting torque with the height of the table will give the toast a half rotation before it hits the ground. So the question became- Why are tables as tall as they are? Because the height is appropriate for the humans sitting at them. So why are people as tall as they are? The article then wandered into molecular cohesion and attraction. So the result was: Toast lands butter side down because the universe is designed that way.

Murphy's law was also mentioned as a possible influence but considered unprovable as any attempt to prove Murphy's law would fail because of the influence of Murphy's law.

On to pizza.

Kev Williams suggests getting a good peel. After using it for 25 years the peel I use is pretty beat up but still works. The lesson in this is that all you need is one with appeal.

By coincidence I baked a pizza the day after this thread started. I put the pizza on the heated baking stone but a few pieces of cheese fell off and landed in the bottom of the oven. It immediately set off the smoke detector. That had me confounded as I usually use the smoke detector to tell me when things are DONE cooking, not when I start.

Lastly, Tom, you posted two philosophical questions in a week. I have those kind of questions too, like what makes up a hole? Now that's deep.

-Tom

[Rick Potter]

I would have let it cool and brought my hound dog in. She lies down on the job, but no lye.