I am not a fan of self cleaning ovens and the toxic fumes of store bought oven cleaners. Over the weekend I made my own oven cleaner.
Prep:
I TBLS dish soap (any kind)
1 1/2 cup baking soda
1/4 cup vinegar
2 TBLS water (enough to make a paste out of the above ingredients)
Put the dish soap in a bowl, add remaining ingredients, stir to paste. I used a pastry brush, you could also use an old paintbrush and coat the inside of oven with the paste. Be sure to take out racks.
Let the paste sit for 6-8 hours or even overnight. I was only able to do 4 hours but I did notice results. You can see from the before and after photos that a good portion of the oven was completely clean.
There was no scrubbing involved, I simply wiped it down with a wet dish rag.
I wasn’t worried about cooking dinner for my family that evening because there wasn’t any toxic fumes afterwards.