I have heard the same thing about self-cleaning ovens: don't. In fact, we just paid to have an ignitor replaced. I bought a big can of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner (the heavy-duty kind in the yellow can). Sprayed it on a cold oven and left it overnight. Next day, wiped the stuff off and finished with a vinegar/water wipe. Just like my mother used to do. Worked beautifully.

Easy-Off yellow can oven cleaner in our manual clean Wolf AG range as well.

One word of advice, wear a face mask while spraying it, and/or open a kitchen window near the oven.

The blue Easy Off is safe for self cleaning ovens. Works pretty well. I finished with a product called Astonish. I have no idea where I got it though.

Do not clean your oven beyond wiping it down with a wet rag.

Yes, self-clean will harm electronics.

ANY chemical you use will harm your health (and will often cause food to taste bad the next few times you use it).

You've a choice; 1) A shiny clean oven, health problems and maybe some chemically tasting food or 2) An oven that looks well loved, no health problems and better tasting food.

Another vote for not bothering. No idea what it is meant to accomplish. The "patina" that develops over time is harmless; better to leave it there than vaporize it into your house or dissolve it with chemicals. Yes, when the apple pie overflows and you've got sugar syrup all over the bottom you will want to wipe it up rather than turning it into carcinogenic smoke to flood your houses

"ANY chemical you use will harm your health" This is of course errant nonsense. Everything we see, touch, eat, and breathe in the world is comprised of chemicals. I suppose the evidence suggests that we all end up dead, so perhaps it's true. But I'm not about to stop using a chemical like water, a very powerful solvent, for cleaning.

I'm supposed to clean my oven?

I have run self-clean several times on my circa 2003 GE range. No failures thus far. The oven controls are electronic, on the backsplash panel. The cooktop controls are rotary analog knobs, also on the back panel.

There was a failure the one time I ran self-clean on my grandmother's gas range many years ago. It was a 1992 Whirlpool model with no electronics. The tip of the thermostat capillary tube inside the oven failed. It probably had corroded over time due to the moisture inherent in combustion of natural gas and the higher heat of self-clean brought it to an end. Granny baked a LOT of pastries for sale to friends and acquaintances so her range had heavy use in that regard.

I helped my neighbor several years ago clean up one of his rental properties between tenants. The Frigidaire gas range there had never been cleaned based on the looks of it. I ran the self-clean cycle and it turned out essentially pristine, with no failure of the electronics.

Dirty does not equal well loved or patina in my house, or in my oven. But I use baking soda and vinegar regularly. But only because I always have it on hand, not some fear of adding chemicals.

I never clean my oven unless there has been a major spill to wipe up. No germs. One oven gets used often to bake bread, the other only gets bread occasionally, but the oven that "knows" bread definitly makes a better loaf. The old timers who used wood burning brick ovens say the walls become impregnated with yeastey stuff to make the bread rise better....but i can't imagine how anything survives long in a 425 oven....but just to be safe...I don't clean my ovens!