I spent Easter weekend in Ottawa and just returned to Toronto. My mother, being British, is a fan of the The Great British Baking Show.
One trick piece of kitchen hardware jumped out at me: the oven they were using had a retractable door. I did a little research and found a video on it here – it’s called a Slide & Hide oven and its sold in Europe by Neff.
Just about every oven I’ve ever seen has had a door that flips down like a typical pickup truck tailgate. That means you need to lean over the hot oven door to pull out food – a tricky proposition if you have a weak back and a heavy roast.
Other ovens let you open the door sideways. I suppose this isn’t quite as safe as a door that flips down. At least the flipped down door will stay put reliably, but a sideways door may begin to close as you are unloading the oven.
I’ve written two articles on pickup truck tailgates, one on the Honda Ridgeline with its clever flip down or open sideways tailgate, and one the new GMC Sierra with its trick three-piece tailgate. I wonder if the retractable tailgate could work with either truck instead? I see a challenge with both. Retracting the tailgate like the Neff would block the under-bed storage in the Honda and would probably compromise bed strength in the Sierra. In both cases it would probably fail to retract all the way before encountering wheel wells.
Still, it’s always interesting to another yet another way to deal with the compromises of door design. The Neff design embodies Principle 7 – Nested Doll and Principle 13 – The Other Way Round.
And while we’re talking about home appliances, why don’t dishwashers have a light when you open them?
