Stove Redux

I’ve been told that I need to praise the stove. I was told this because I’ve used the broiler in it two days running, and have found it to be absolutely fabulous, and then realized that (except for the self-clean ‘incinerate everything’ setting) we’ve used every feature of the oven … and it’s come through with flying colors.

We were scared of having a glass-top stove (ceramic-top stove – same thing), because of all of the horror stories which abound out there. We were afraid we’d drop something & break it, we’d scratch it, we’d get sugar on the surface & it’d pit / pock. No such thing has happened, and let me tell you that we don’t eat out, like ever. So. Every meal now for a month and a half has been cooked on this stove (with a wee bit of help from the 1970’s microwave), and we’ve had no problems. That’s not to say that we haven’t had some scares, but we soon discovered that what looks like a scratch isn’t, really, but is most likely some heated-on gunk that got stuck to the bottom of the pan and dragged across the surface, and comes off with a non-metallic scrubby sponge.

About the only down-side is that the bottom racks heat differently from the top racks, and that if you’re going to try to bake like 8 loaves of bread … well, you have to test the two racks independently. And the ones on the bottom will have darker bottom crusts, where those in the middle / upper racks will have more even browning.

Aside from that, the thing’s been endless fun, especially the timer / delayed-bake functions. It’s SO fabulous to throw a whole bunch of things into a casserole dish (onions, green beans, some grain or other, some meat substitute thing, some wine, some sauce, etc.), set the delayed-bake function & tell it to cook at, say, 3:30 pm for an hour, and then to arrive home to find hot dinner sitting there, driving TadMack crazy with the smell because she’s been writing and wouldn’t have come up for air OR food ’til like 8:00. Ahh. Sweet torture of regularly-scheduled meals.

Can I praise this oven more? Perhaps. We’ll have to see how nicely the sourdough turns out this evening, and I’m sure I’ll try not to forget which appliance was responsible. But having something which is modern? This is a first for me, and I’ve truly grown used to it!

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