Cage Free Monkeys

My Oven is On the Fritz

There are those people who can cook limitless little buns without so much as a thought and always get great results. Then there are those who one day peek in their oven to be astounded at the fact that there is a fresh warm bun baking without the slightest idea of how it got in there. My oven has never been that reliable but has turned out some great products—with some intervention from some really proactive oven specialists.

I had to test my oven daily to see if it would be ready to bake anything. And when it would finally show that it was ready, it was a rush – a mad dash of sorts- to combine all of the ingredients and a wait-and-see approach to see if the oven would actually bake it.

As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, there was the time that I was baking two little buns simultaneously. They began to cook for a while but then suddenly the oven decided to only bake one.

Or the occasion when I put the timer on for 40 weeks with one little bun and the oven decided to crap out around 30 weeks, having cooked my expected little bun to a mere 3 lb 4 oz. little loaf instead of the anticipated 7lb version.

Or the time when the oven was cooking but somehow kept adding sugar to the recipe hourly. I had to combat this by injecting anti-sugar ingredients several times a day.

After all of these episodes I decided not to bake anymore because it was just too risky to put anything in there.

So its really never been that reliable which is why the newest development doesn’t surprise me much.

I was speaking with a general appliance repairman and happened to mention that the oven was turning on at night and running for a few hours really hot—for no apparent reason. It would get so hot I‘d have to open the windows to cool down the house. And seriously from what I read in the owner’s manual this shouldn’t be happening until the appliance was about 50 years old—still a good 14 years away.

The good appliance repairman explained that every oven is different and some go through this “breakdown cycle” staring after owning it for 35 years. He said that this seemed to be the early stages of the cycle and that it won’t be completely “kaput” for about another 10 years.

Strange. I know I hadn’t planned on baking really ever again. But at least I *knew* the oven was there should I ever get a strong hankering a nice warm little 7lb loaf—an undeniable urge to throw caution to the wind and bake something. Strange to think that this is slightly a bummer.

My oven still wears its age pretty well. Of course there are a few surface crevices showing its age and the passage of time, and the couple of repaired cracks from trying to get the previous baked goods out. But all in all, to look at it—or my whole kitchen for that matter you wouldn’t think that it was on its way out. But it is. It’s entering the stage when it goes completely on the fritz. Circuits will start doing their own thing- misfiring and whatnot. It will run these hot cycles, especially at night. Eventually, over time, it will stop working all together.

But I look at my previously baked goods and revel in the marvelousness that they did cook and are the yummiest things ever turned out of anyone’s kitchen. I can’t ask for more than that.

At least I won’t have to run that annoying cleaning cycle anymore!