Explosion!

Well, I've been having evil thoughts about my cooker lately, mainly to do with the fact that it doesn't have a fan in the oven, thus resulting in bread with almost white underside, as not enough heat ends up underneath.

Multi-zone cooking it's called and is probably really good for a roast dinner, where you need to cook several things at different temperatures, but for bread, you want heat both above and under.

And perhaps the cooker picked up bad vibes from this and decided to explode its lid last Thursday. Luckily at the time, I was in the living room, sorting my recipes. That's when I heard a large bang from the kitchen and was almost afraid to go in and see what might have caused it.

But that was just a moment's hesitation. I carefully opened the door to a floor covered with small dark glass pieces and wondered what on earth they were - all glasses I have are clear. Then I noticed that the two bread tins I'd placed on the cooker were sitting at a slightly odd angle and realised that the toughened glass lid was no more. I rushed in and removed them, thinking I might have left a hob on and closed the lid and that would have caused this disaster.

I then spent the better part of the evening cleaning up, while trying not to imagine how shredded I would have been if I'd been in the kitchen at the time of the explosion. Well, the kitchen was in need of a good clean anyway.

I then had a long talk with my parents and my sister on the phone, thus completely forgetting about my two loaves and they almost tried to escape from the tins after over 6 h of proofing, when I'd originally intended to do only 3. This was not detrimental in any way, in fact I might have stumbled upon something good.

I also did some search on the internet about this. I've only had the cooker for barely 4 years. But it seems that this is nothing new. And there are lots of theories about it. The one that appealed to me is the placing very hot or very cold things on the lid, thus weakening the glass and causing it to shatter in a highly dangerous way. I do place frozen things on the lid to defrost. And I do put things that I've taken out of the oven on the lid as well, though not at the same time as the frozen things. And I do close the lid very soon after using the hobs, without letting things cool down first. Still, this shouldn't happen. Why don't they use the same stuff they use on ceramic hobs? That seems to be able to take a bit more beating.

Mainly though, it seems that the glass of the oven lid is the one to explode in such a dangerous fashion. Well, I have a double oven, that makes it 2 more chances of this happening, though on a slightly smaller scale.

I was mostly worried that I'd forgotten to switch off a hob before closing the lid, this terrified me immensely. But as I taped up the metal bar at the back, which held the glass lid to the cooker and had a lot of sharp bits sticking out of it, I noticed that it kept pushing a small metal piece, as the lid opened and closed and I realised that this was the gas cut-out, should one indeed close the lid when hob is on. Puh! Even if I had forgotten it, it wouldn't have continued to burn.

So, now I have a maimed looking cooker and am seriously thinking of replacing it. With one that has a fan in the oven, so I can get a more even temperature when I bake my breads. Sadly there wasn't much available on the market, only one oven in fact.

There were also no cookers that had a metal lid instead of a glass one. It would probably buckle, but that won't fly through my kitchen and pierce me.

I baked my breads at nearly Midnight, when I finally remembered them and they turned out absolutely lovely.

As for the cooker, I'll live with this one for a bit longer, hopefully new models will come out that do the things I need them to do. And are easier to clean.