A lot of consumer bakeware comes with some goofy silicone coating on it. USA Pan comes to mind as one maker. Do not buy it. Just get plain aluminum (Vollrath) from a restaurant supply, or black steel when you can find it. Black steel bakeware should be treated exactly as you would a black steel pan. It would not go in the dishwasher, nor would you use strong cleaners on it at all.
Oven cleaner is essentially just sodium hydroxide (lye). It’s strong, but it rinses clean. It doesn’t leave some funky, dangerous chemical forever behind on your sheet pan. The best way to rinse a pan after using oven cleaner on it is to just run it through your dishwasher. Lye will not hurt your dishwasher since all dishwasher detergents, in essence, contain it – they’re a base, not an acid. Another very common substance in your kitchen, that is a base, is baking soda. Not as strong a base as lye, but a base nevertheless.
Thanks for all this info. I have a lot of sheet pans besides the damaged one. Some are the USA pans, which I actually love, as well as some others. I try not to have big clean up jobs, so use parchment and foil, depending.
I hate to break this to you, but when sodium hydroxide (lye) or another strong base comes into contact with a fat/oil, soap is made. See “saponification.” That’s why the crud drips right off your oven. You’re obviously using a higher proportion of lye than you would to make actual soap you would use, but that’s what’s happening anyway. Heat speeds up the reaction (“hot process soap making”).
I only subjected my one pan to that cleaning method, fortunately. Regular dish soap/detergent works fine for my needs. But thank you for all the information.
The texture is like sandpaper. These are both nordic ware natural line aluminum pans. Perhaps there is some coating on it causing the problem as JustCharile suggests but it is not mentioned in product description. Regardless, use oven cleaner at your own risk. That little spot of orange is just something that happened sitting outside my shed so disregard that as part of the issue.
ETA: I just remembered that the one I destroyed is not Nordicware, I think it was Vollrath. Just took picture with the nordic one to show contrast with one not cleaned with oven cleaner.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
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Yes, exactly - looks almost identical to the first one, and the texture is as you described as well. At least I now have a beater pan I can use on the grill or in the smoker though. Gotta look for those silver linings!
You probably can still use it with some lining, like parchment paper. However, these days, pans are not too expensive, so this can be your beater pans for something else.
That’s because the lye in the oven cleaner was reacting to the aluminum and effectively dissolving it which caused the pitting. I wouldn’t recommend using any cleaner with a strong base on aluminum.
Don’t know. They didn’t report anything like that in the Kitchn article for the one they used oven cleaner on and I’ve never seen anything like what you’re showing either. I’d say it’s the pan.
In fact, it was their next highest rated method and probably would have been the highest if they understood what’s in Easy Off and that it rinses perfectly clean and is not some lingering industrial chemical. Dawn leaves more traces of itself than oven cleaner (lye, sodium hydroxide).
