There is a running joke in our house that dinner won’t be good unless the smoke detector goes off at least once. Yes, we get smoke in our kitchen very often, usually from searing steaks on the stove, or perhaps making pelau by caramelizing brown sugar in the pot and then throwing in the chicken. This, my friends, makes a lot of smoke. But this joke can also be a testament to how infrequently I clean the oven. This story serves as case in point.
I like making pizza. The family enjoys eating pizza. I enjoy eating pizza. But Isaac has a weekly activity every Friday night, and pizza is kind of a Friday food, so it’s been six months since I’ve made it. And since we moved almost a year ago I’ve only made pizza once. Being long overdue, I decided to do it on a weekday. Tuesday, in fact, because there are no activities at all on Tuesday nights. Well, except this week, but whatever.
The dough was coming together fine; after a sluggish start it kneaded into proper form nicely. I was feeling good. After rising I divided it into three pieces, like always, and set it to proof on the counter while the oven preheated. Then the show started.
I’m not sure how long it had been since I cleaned the oven. A WHILE. But you know how it is. You preheat the oven and whatever’s on the bottom burns out and once the smoke clears you cook dinner. Or, if you can’t wait, you enjoy your meal with a delightfully smoky flavor, for free!
Anyway, I noticed that there was more stuff on the bottom of the oven than normal this day. Also, usually when we cook dinner it’s somewhere in the 350°-400° range, but pizza needs a very hot oven. 500° all the way. So, there’s more stuff (let’s just call it grease, that’s what it is), and the oven is getting hotter and smokier as time goes by. I start doing some math in my head. “That’s probably some sort of poultry fat down there, what do you think the flash point of that stuff is? I’m betting somewhere between 375° and 450°. How hot do you think the heating element has to be to get the oven to 500°? Let’s hope it all smokes away and then I can cook.” It doesn’t. When the oven is right about 490° a tiny flame appears right under the heating element. Then another. I shut off the oven and start looking for the kosher salt. I learned a long time ago from Bobby Flay that kosher salt is very effective for smothering small grease fires before they get going, just like baking soda. So take note, people!
The grease (and, as a result, the flames) was waaay in the back. I had to pour the salt into a cup to get it back that far without burning my arm on the top of the oven. And the house is so full of smoke that the basement smoke alarm goes off. We open every window in the house and the front door and it’s 30 degrees outside and Karen isn’t home. So now what? The house didn’t burn down, true, but I can’t cook in that oven until it cools down and I can clean it out. And the pizza is ready, see?
So I do what we very rarely do in our house. I baked them in the oven downstairs. Now, this house was built in 1962 and I’m sure the oven was here when it was built. Perhaps it was originally in the kitchen on the main floor, and when they renovated the kitchen and finished the basement they moved it down, I don’t know, but this is older than me. I don’t trust it, and we never have it on unsupervised. But it did well with the pizza, see?
Also in that picture, to appease my mother, is proof that yes we have a fire extinguisher.
So dinner was a success and we still have a roof over our heads. Note to self: We need more kosher salt.
As a bonus, here is a picture presumably snapped by one of the kids after I had moved the tripod out of the way and this is what the camera was pointing at.