Seeing the self cleaning feature is one of the reasons I bought a more expensive unit, it would be foolish not to use it. So I do, because it's super convenient and the oven looks like new after.

I second what Dadoes said.

I will note that, back in old days, in the previous century, when I worked in commercial
kitchens, we used to leave a bowl of ammonia to sit in a warmed oven
overnight and then scrub the oven out the following morning Use a search string like "oven cleaning + how
to" to turn up dozens of threads on various others ways to "myself" clean your oven.

My current gas range does not have a self-cleaning oven. (I decided to get a pro-style range but wasn't willing to pay thousands more to get a model with a self cleaning oven.) These days, I mostly rely on a home-brewed version of what Whirlpool markets as "Aqualift." Basically getting the oven hot and steamy and then later wiping (sometimes scrubbing it down. (I bake a lot of bread so I often steam inject the oven, anyway.) I use a razor scraper to clean the inside of the glass on the oven door (an example of the tol could be a scraper for cleaning a smoothop on an electric stove.) About once a year -- following the Thanksgiving to New Years cooking marathon -- I combine steaming and ammonia treatments. Every couple of years or so, I resort to a product like "Fume Free Easy Off" to get serious grunge off the bottom of the oven and from around the convection fan housing. The oven then gets rinsed and wiped down well, then run at high temp for bit with the hood vent fan going.

Over the years, Dadoes, I and others have probably participated in a dozen or so threads on the topic of should you or shouldn't you use self-cleaning. Of course now that I'm searching for some of those threads, none of them are turning up in searches. Let me summarize briefly for you what I recall.

Induction ranges are not peculiarly suscetible to fialing from self-cleaning cycles. Its the not-so-great controller and circuit boards used. These fail in Induction cooktops, too, and most of them are nowhere near close enough to an oven to blame oven self-cleaning for the failed boards.

Heck, look at fridges which have been seeing the same proiiferation of controllers and boards. Five years ago, when I last bought a fridge, the membership surveys by Consumer Reports were showing some brands with failure rates around 7 to 8% within the first five years. Lately, the rate has gone up around 20% except for Electrolux's namesake brand and its Frigidaire's PRO line, which are much higher. Can't blame that on pyrolitic self cleaning ovens.

Whirlpool ovens and ranges (including Kitchenaid, JennAir, Amana and Maytag) had a spate of genuinely significant self-clean caused problems
for a number of years. After class action lawsuits were filed, Whirlpool fixed those problems (peculiar to its
designs) by putting in bigger (and noisier) cooling fans
for the electronics and then switching to the lower-heat steaming of the much maligned Aqualift
self-cleaning design. You could pretty much do the same thing as Aqualift without resort to Whirlpool products (as per my starting comments.)

Also, the postings of online complaints tell us that some ranges and wall ovens do fail during and/or as a result of adverse effects from self cleaning cycles. As Dadoes used to point out (before tiring of repeating it), we consumers have no way of finding real numbers on what proportion of oven and range failures are actually a result of running self-cleaning cycles. There are literally millions and millions of ranges and wall ovens out there. The numbers are so high that a small percentage of self-cleaning failures translates to a very large number of complaints.

Compounding that, we all have differing reactions and perceptions of risk. If you knew that self-clean failures affected 5% of ranges and ovens, would you be be more willing or less willing to use the pyrolytic self-cleaning? For some of us, a 5% risk of failure would make us shrug --- 95% of ovens would not have the problem. Others of us would say that 5% amounts to 1 in 20 chance of damage which would strike them an outrageous and unacceptable level of risk. YMMV.

To further clarify about the chemical residue ...

The interior of a self-cleaning oven is typically the same type of porcelain finish as a non-self-cleaner so oven cleaners shouldn't damage it. The caveat is that a self-clean cycle should never again be run so as to not incinerate any chemical residue and release noxious/dangerous fumes. That's all fine and well as long as the homeowner is aware but suppose the house is sold and the buyer isn't aware or told and runs a self-clean cycle ...

Note that this does not apply to continuous-clean units that were marketed some years ago. Continuous-clean ovens have a special porous and treated surface that absorbs and spreads soil over the surface and (slowly, LOL) dissipates it at normal baking temperatures. Chemical oven cleaners will damage the surface.

Also to say, concern is often cited about the cost of electric power or gas to run a high-heat self-clean cycle. It's less cost than buying a can of oven cleaner. And self-clean units have heavier insulation which makes them more efficient at baking/broiling temperatures (although the difference probably isn't much).

I think everyone is right and I am going to use the ovens self-cleaning feature without fear!!!. Thank you all! LOL!

I always recommend running the self clean cycle after the holidays are finished. But I am in the camp that believes that you should use the self clean cycle and do so on my own oven.

dadoes,

My repair person (not for my oven but other appliances) said you should NEVER run self clean if you have used a spray type oven cleaner. If I recall, he said the oven walls are porous and the cleaner gets into it and then does damage when you run the self clean. I'm not sure that made much sense to me and I didn't persue it since I Use the self clean function about once a month and have no intention of going back to the early 70's of spraying noxious fumes, wearing rubber gloves and scrubbing. Done with that!

On that note, I wish every one a very Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyones oven works according to expectations and none of the glass cook tops explode. May your Trukey come out GB&D. Keep in mind, it's the time to get together with family and friends even if some of the side dishes don't come out as you wished. No one really noticed. and most likely, they are great.

Inga

I just had my Miele range installed and I am hoping to use the self clean feature. The Miele installer said it shouldn't be used too often, he recommended 2 or 3 times a year. Needless to say. I will not try it out until the holidays are over.