Oven Interiors

[retromania]

While cleaning my stove this weekend, it brought back memories of my mother cleaning her Frigidaire range and especially the oven. I was always in awe the way the oven interior would slide out and rest on the oven door. Then on hands and knees with a kitchen sponge and a bucket of water she would start the process of wiping the EZ Off foam/grime out. There would be the pretty light gray interior of the oven. It started me thinking about oven interiors over the years. The light gray Frigidaire interior. Our light gray GE oven interior when we moved to the new house. Then lastly, the matte sort of rough finish of her Whirlpool continuous clean oven. Oven surfaces sure have changed through the years. There was the speckled appearance of some of the earlier oven interiors. Then the light grays. Then what I have now which is shiny black. My assumption is it had largely to do with the advent of self-cleaning ovens. The light gray might not be able to withstand the high temps of self-cleaning. I personally don't mind getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing out the oven. My mother was fanatical about the appearance of her appliances and I guess that's where I got it from. Then this past weekend I was watching a cooking show on ETV with Julia Child and her modern day wall oven with convection sported that nostalgic speckled appearance. I wondered what that was about? Is it strictly asthetics or is there some benefit of the speckled interior. Anyone care to comment? Also, if this topic was addressed in an earlier thread, would someone be kind enough to tell me where in archives I might find it? Thanks! Oh, and P.S. Oven racks have gotten so crummy through the years. Makes you scared to put a big roast in for fear the rack will bend. It is precisely why I bought the Maytag range I've got now. The racks in it are beefy like the older ranges. Well, maybe not quite as beefy, but close.

 

[frigilux]

My mom was a "clean oven" fanatic, too, Andy. And guess who was given the privilege of cleaning it every single time something spattered? You guessed it. This is probably why the first thing that went out the door a couple of days after my mom's funeral was the circa 1967 36" coppertone Kenmore range, which had two ovens--one narrow and one regular. If I remember correctly, the big oven had a dark-ish interior, but the narrow oven was shiny like aluminum, both of which needed cleaning.

It was replaced with a self-cleaning 1985 Whirlpool. I didn't even care that there was a six-inch gap on one side of it. I vowed never to clean another oven!

My current ranges, both 2002 Frigidaires (one gas; one electric) have finely speckled interiors of black, grey, and white. I actually had to go have a look when I read your post, as I had never really looked at it closely enough to remember precisely what it looked like.

I like to keep a clean oven, too...but now all I have to do is pull out the racks and touch the CLEAN pad. Ah, how I love modern conveniences. I admit to wiping the cavity out with damp paper towels at the end of the cleaning cycle to give it that showroom gleam.

 

[danemodsandy]

Andy:

I think oven interior colors are more about fashion than anything else, continuous-clean ovens excepted. I've had several self-cleaners with light grey porcelain over the years. Black is just very "in" right now.

Continuous-clean ovens depended on that special coating, which didn't work all that well; if they had made the coating in a light color, it would have given the game away. If you were conscientious about wiping spills and cleaning racks, continuous-clean could look presentable, but it was never my idea of clean.

I am not crazy about dark interiors, because they make it harder to see food through the oven door window; light grey reflects light better. The combination of a black interior and a black glass oven door would drive me crazy - black glass also cuts down on visibility.

 

[retromania]

WOW!!

I hear you. And wow. Two side by side. One electric and one gas. The best of both. That also answered my question (I think!) about oven interiors. Thanks!

 

[mixfinder]

Cost +

Its my experience darker oven interiors seem to brown more than the older and heavier ranges. My 1968 Frigidaire has side by side ovens with gray porcelain on the left and gray pyrolytic on the right. They both are as new all these many years later. I much prefer using a lighter oven interior as it gives a truer hue of the browness of items baking. I haven't used one but I like the starting blue of some new ovens.
At the end of the day I wonder i the new oven colors are cheaper to produce.

 

[mrb627]

AquaLift?

What is your opinion of the Whirlpool Aqualift oven cleaning?

I LOVE the blue interior of some of the professional ranges...

Malcolm

 

[retromania]

Thanks Sandy. That makes sense. That would explain the retro interior of Julia's fancy state of the art wall oven. Kelley, I never heard of pyrolytic. Will have to Google that.

 

[frigilux]

Consumer Reports gave the Aqualift cleaning system a big thumbs-down. They ran several cleaning cycles and still had to do a lot of scrubbing to remove baked-on deposits from the top, sides, and door of the oven cavity. My take: A great collector's item for the future. File Under: Maytag TL Neptune.

 

[mrb627]

Damn

Well that sucks.

Malcolm

 

[tomturbomatic]

There were Florence range ads in the early-mid 50s showing gleaming white ovens and Tappan had chrome lined ovens, both of which would be very hard to keep clean. I think ligher porcelain shades for ovens helped make them look larger and with a lighted oven, which was clearly a step up feature, it gave more reflectivity for better illumination.

 

[retromania]

Ok.

So it's the type of interior for self-cleaning. The website I was on said pyrolytic ovens have been around about 50 years. That sounds about right. I guess the very first time I saw a self-cleaning oven was in the late 1960's. Until my Mom did her kitchen over in 1992 and replaced the GE drop-in with the Whirlpool continuous clean, there was no self-clean oven in our house. Although our stoves got a workout, they never wore out. Sometimes a surface or oven calrod had to be replaced, but that was about it. The GE was still working fine. She was just tired of the avacado color and she would have had it painted at the local body shop except the controls for the stove were built-in to the range hood above which was also the green color. Her appliance repairman told her that to remove that hood with the buttons would be greater that the stove was worth. As much as I love vintage I had to agree with him. Besides, the fan motor was about shot. One feature that GE drop-in had that I really liked was that you could remove the oven door. That was very convenient. I remember how heavy or I should say 'solid' that oven door was. [this post was last edited: 12/30/2012-12:10]

 

[luxflairguy]

My family had one of the first GE self cleaning ranges in 1965. We moved it twice and it is still cooking today in Cocoa Beach, FL.

The oven in Julia Child's kitchen is a Thermador, which were known for their speckled interior.

 

[retromania]

I know with this black interior on my Maytag, because it's so dark (even with oven light on) I think something has browned enough only to pull it and see it hasn't and have to push it back in for a few more minutes.

 

[moparguy]

I think the brown interior of the later 50s Kenmore stoves was really cool! Kind of an unusual shade of light brown, maybe a bit of mauve or irridescense (sp?) to it!

 

[retromania]

Thanks Greg! Julia had a guest in her kitchen the other day baking these little loaves that left me kind of cold. Julia in these episodes is older and not very hands on. She assists like opening the oven door, etc. She pulled the hot oven rack out with a notched wooden tool. I had completely forgotten about those. That had to be from the 70's. Also, her guest was using an old set of aluminum measuring spoons.

 

[retromania]

Jeff,

Where have I been? I never saw a brown oven interior. Was that a design feature that only Kenmore boasted?

 

[philr]

Here in Canada, Frigidaire used a much darker porcelain for many of their ovens (but not all) and in other appliances too such as dryer drums and washer tubs.

Both have their advantages, darker porcelain seems less dirty when the oven needs to be cleaned and the lighter porcelain makes things easier to see in the ovens.

My Canadian 1960 Frigidaire range.



A very similar US-made range. Neither have the Pull-N-Clean oven.

 

[rinso]

I had the job of cleaning the chrome walls of the ovens in my mom's 40" Flair range. They didn't seem to do a great job of baking, but the large oven had the programmable roasting feature. It would turn out a perfect prime rib every time.

 

[retromania]

Those chrome Flair range had ball bearing oven racks, right? I thought that was a neat feature. There were two old maid sisters in my town that taught p.e. at the girls high school back before public high schools here were coed. Anyway, they retired from teaching and started a very successful catering business out of their home. One sister died and the other one went into a nursing home. Their house sat there all the years the remaining sister was in the nursing home. A friend of my mother's bought the house when the old woman died. Anyway, I'm getting to point, I promise! There was an old 40 inch electric Hotpoint range with double ovens in the house. The larger of the two oven had ball bearing oven racks. There were about four racks in that one side. It was made that way because the other side had standard racks. So they obviously ordered the stove that way from the dealer. The racks weren't after factory. I always wondered though without a convection fan how they could bake successfully with that many racks that close together. They weren't around to answer my question. Also, I remember there was a Kitchenaid dishwasher in the kitchen just like Robert and Fred's!