frobzwiththingz

So, we've got this gas oven. It's been running sort of flakey for a while, short-cycling the oven burner and occasionally just not heating up in any sane amount of time. Just before christmas I diagnosed it as most likely a bad ignitor and ordered a new one. Put it in on the 26th of december.

Presto, oven works wonderfully again.

Fast forward to tonight. I decide to make a pizza. I do the usual trick I have always done with this oven of lining a single shelf with aluminum foil, and loading that shelf at the very top. This prevents normal convection currents, and so the themocouple, which sits at the very top of the oven, *above* this shelf, is somewhat isolated from the rest of the oven, particularly the pizza stone at the bottom. Doing this has always allowed me to make very nice crispy-carbony crust pies in a standard consumer oven that won't let you dial in more than 550F, as that stone will get way hotter before the oven thinks it's hit 550.

Tonight, however, I've changed a variable. The oven burner system now works far better than it ever has. (we got this oven used). I put in the pie, and immediately I see that the stone surface is way hotter than I've ever had it before. All good, i think. Except that I set the timer for 9 minutes, the usual, and that turns out to be WAY WRONG. I'm at my computer in the other end of the house and I smell smoke. I go into the kitchen. There's 2 minutes still on the timer. Smoke is billowing out of the top oven vents. I open the oven door. The pizza cheese from my extra-cheese 'za has run over, melted itself to the stone, along with other oils, etc, and is filling the kitchen with thick smoke. I try to get the pizza out. It's half stuck. It requires multiple tools to get it onto the peel, all the while spilling more combustibles onto the stone and oven floor. More smoke. Cough Cough.

I finally get the damned thing out in many pieces, and set up an exhaust fan in the kitchen to clear the smoke. Which is still coming out of the oven, which I've left on, because, well, may as well burn the stuff away completely so I can scrape the carbon down later. At least it's not *too* cold outside.

Pizza, while a bit extra carbonized and quite balkanized, is still reasonably tasty and edible, so theres that. but Ugh, what a mess.

RUN YOUR DAMNED UNIT TESTS.