You would have to have something that vents outside. I don't think any oven does that. I run my attic fan with a window open on the other side of the oven to pull smells out when I run the self clean. The self clean works by incinerating debris in your oven so what the smell is would be influenced by what is burning I would think. Maybe someone used oven cleaner at some point in that oven and it is burning off. Aromas from baking ought to be a good thing!
I have noticed my Electrolux seems to put out a smaller amount of heat than the previous oven.

Your oven may be faulty from what you describe and should be removed from the cabinet and both checked out.
It is unlikely that any replacement would produce the same symptoms.

I agree that your current oven seems either (a) faulty or (b) really, really in need of a good cleaning.

More broadly, however, if you are worried about this issue I would make sure any replacement oven includes a catalytic converter. This will "scrub" the air leaving the oven of grease, fumes and odors. I looked at the parts list and manuals for the Jenn-Air and it doesn't look like it has one. This feature is promoted heavily by Kuppersbusch* and Gaggenau, but is also present in some form or other ovens from Fisher + Paykel/DCS and Miele, an probably other manufacturers I am unaware of.

* Kuppersbusch makes a *really* big deal about theirs, called Okotherm. My understanding is that what makes it unique is that in the Kuppersbusch ovens the converter is a ring integrated around the convection fan, so it not only cleans exhaust air it also constantly cleans the air as it recirculates within the oven, further decreasing odor transfer and preventing the oven from getting as dirty in the first place. But I have no personal experience with it, and others may understand it all better...

You might want to double check, as wekick mentioned, that there is no oven cleaner residue on the heating coils and crevices in your oven. We moved into a rental house a few years ago and the owner had hired a cleaning lady to clean prior to move-in. Well, the first time I turned on the oven, the house was filled with noxious, awful, run-from-the-kitchen fumes. Turns out it was leftover oven cleaner spray that had gotten on and behind the upper heating coils. You couldn't see it, but when you wiped with a damp paper towel, there was yellowish brown residue. I wiped out every tiny crack in the oven and it was much better. Even then, it took several weeks for the fumes to dissipate.

Even with the air filter, one can detect some cooking aroma with the Gaggenau oven. Not "fills the room" but detectable. When one opens the oven door, all the aroma in the oven comes rushing out and can fill the room if it's a very fragrant dish. This is "yum, what's for dinner?" aroma, not "phew! stinks!"

I'm not sure from what you've said exactly what's going on with your oven. When you mention that there are fumes after a cleaning cycle, do you mean oven cleaner as is surmised above? Or do you mean after you run a pyrolitic self-clean cycle?

If it's the latter, do you clean the oven with a sponge and water first to get out the loose drippings? Self-clean works great on burnt on crud, but incinerate actual food deposits in a very smelly way, and if there's fat involved it can set your oven on fire. It is really important to manually clean what you can easily get out before you self clean. When self clean is over, do you rinse it down well? To get out any ashes? That's also important. If there's a lot of char left, it could also create bad smells until it's well coated with spatter again.

BTW, if you do have cleaning help who are using oven cleaner in a self cleaning oven, make them stop!!! It can ruin the enamel which makes the self clean work, and oven cleaner residue can be toxic when superheated. My mother still laughs at how her housekeeper and I physically barred a temporary home nurse (whose job was not to clean!) from trying to use oven cleaner in her beautiful oven.

But if just normal cooking aromas are bothering you as well, you can, potentially, put a hood over your oven. You just need somewhere to vent it. My mother has one that was specifically designed for ovens that dates back fifty years. They don't make them any more. Sometimes I wish I'd put a pull out, slimline one rather than relying on the oven's air filters, but my overpowered hood over the cooktop, about 8 feet away, does a decent job when I really need to clear the air from it.

Good luck.

BTW, if you do have cleaning help who are using oven cleaner in a self cleaning oven, make them stop!!! It can ruin the enamel which makes the self clean work, and oven cleaner residue can be toxic when superheated.Oven cleaner will not ruin the finish. Self-cleaning ovens have a standard porcelain enamel interior, same as manual-clean ovens.

Continuous-cleaning ovens are the type that will be damaged by oven cleaner. They have a porous finish that is specially treated to absorb and dissipate grease at normal baking temperatures.

You are correct, however, about toxic fumes being produced from residue of oven cleaner at the very high temperature (~950F) reached during the self-clean cycle. This may be the source of the fumes SeeBuyFly is experiencing if the previous owners of the house did use oven cleaner (perhaps not aware it's a self-cleaner, or afraid to use the feature).

Oh! Thanks for saying. I guess it's the potential toxics that have the instructions saying to never use the oven cleaner. I guess the word on the street conflated the two types. I love learning stuff. I didn't even know there was a porous finish for ovens!

Many thanks for all the comments! There is no oven cleaner residue in the oven. The ovens with catalytic converters are outside our budget, but we'll look into homebrew venting, or see if the wall oven can be moved to under the cooktop (i.e. under the vent fan). This would be part of a kitchen renovation, which we are considering.

I had a range that someone had used oven cleaner in it and it never did come out and you could smell it with high, high heat. You couldn't see any sign of it.

Catalytic converters aside, only a large ventilation system over the oven door area would have any hope of capturing and removing the odor that will escape, particularly when the door is opened. And installing such would also impact MUA requirements.

kas

Our new Kenmore double convection wall ovens come with an "air guard" system that you can turn on or off. If on, it does a fairly good job (but not perfect) of eliminating odors. We leave it off most of the time because we like the "dinner will soon be ready" aromas....

**we'll look into homebrew venting, or see if the wall oven can be moved to under the cooktop (i.e. under the vent fan). This would be part of a kitchen renovation, which we are considering.**

Rather than spend the time and money to move it or build your own vent, you really should consider just buying another oven. No oven should ever put out fumes that make people gasp for breath and feel unable to stay in the house. That sounds toxic, and totally abnormal. You do not need a fancy oven with a catalytic converter to avoid having it spew toxic fumes into the kitchen.

In a word, your oven is either faulty (if it's always been like this) or broken. Fixing or replacing it--but probably replacing it, since a bizarro condition like this is probably an expensive fix--are good options. Messing with the venting is not going to do the trick.

If you must have outdoor venting, you can go used - and look online for a nearby seller (on craigslist, backpage, eBay etc.) of a Thermador oven of your needed dimensions from the late 1990s or earlier, before they were bought out by Bosch. Their ovens of this vintage had a unique design that (optionally) could be vented and ducted outdoors so the kitchen stays cool and it doesn't spread oven smells through the kitchen. These ovens can be identified easily by their small door windows, simple knobs for setting temperature and such (rather than electronic keypads), open-door broiling, no gasket around the door frame area, and a white and blue glossy interior coating that stays clean looking by itself. Model #s on the last units to use this design were typically CT127 or CT230 (for a single 27"w oven and a double 30" oven respectively.) White, black, and stainless steel were available, in 30", 27" and maybe 24" widths, single or double. There was also a CMT version that's similar to GE's current "Trivection" ovens that incorporate a microwave oven in one of the double ovens - these are a few inches taller than usual though. Great oven design if you can find one in good shape, and there are still plenty out there since they built this same basic oven for decades - other than older-looking control panels and more use, I'd have no problem using older models; they're just as good in the key areas. The hard part is adding proper ductwork (and a fan? never installed one myself); hopefully all of the ancillary parts are still available.

My 60's vintage double oven (side by side) has an integral vent above the ovens which runs the width. Simply pull out the bottom of the vent panel (at an angle) and its exhaust fan starts. I really love it, and the fact the the oven doors swing up out of the way as they open.

Embrace your smells? Seriously, I don't want to be judgmental and understand everyone has their story and reason, but I think the heart of the kitchen is the smell that emanates. To mix up some metaphors or something.

I think Kas' point is correct: you've gotta open the door sometime and then unless you have a major mega-sucker overhead, out pop the smells anyway.

We have an exhaust vent above our double wall ovens similar to what attofarad has. It was made by Broan and installed during our first kitchen remodel in 1985 - back in the old days when you broiled with the door ajar. The ovens were GE so it's not part of the ovens.

When we remodeled a few years ago we kept the exhaust even though our new double ovens broil with the door closed. Every now and then it comes in handy when you burn the garlic bread under the broiler. I haven't had to use it when the ovens self clean because the odor isn't that bad.

I finally figured out the answers to my questions by partially disassembling the oven.

It turns out that the fan that runs to cool the electronics will not pull smells out of the oven because it only circulates air outside the oven. So a non-digital oven won't be any different. Similarly, the convection fan only circulates air inside the oven, and should not normally cause smells to leave the oven. So buying a non-convection oven won't help either.

So why did our old non-digital, non-convection oven smell so much less? What I figured out is that the gasket on the door of the new oven is installed such as to leave a gap at the bottom of the door. (See the image in the link below and imagine that gasket to be installed in the oven door just as shown---the ends are inserted into little slots on the door.)

I was able to reconfigure the gasket (switch the slots into which each end goes) such that the gasket 'crosses itself' and leaves no gap. In other words, there is now a 100%-around seal rather than a 95% seal. This seems to have made a difference.

Here is a link that might be useful: gasket shape

I recommend not attempting to reconfigure the gasket. The gap likely is there for a reason. Ovens need airflow through the cavity to vent moisture from the baking process. My GE oven gasket has a large gap across the bottom of the door.

The gasket configuration leaving space for air to flow into the oven at the bottom of the door and out through the mini stack on the top at the back is a safety design which is related to preventing explosive grease fires at high temperatures when the oven door is opened and something goes amiss, especially if red hot elements are exposed to the grease vapor. You could also imagine the results of a large forgotten oil spill being present within a sealed oven being run on self clean for an extended period.

While your change is not a common or immediate danger, it has the potential of biting you quite badly some day if given the chance.

If you can fit a double 30" oven, here's a rare find (link below) - a new, unused Thermador oven that was made about 10 years ago, probably from a kitchen remodeling or cabinetry store display. This one has the outdoor venting so even using the self-cleaning feature won't smell or heat up the kitchen. They replaced this design with the cheaper-to-build kind they make now shortly after this was made; the new ones don't have the outdoor venting option. I'm not aware of any current-model ovens that have outdoor venting capability.

The gasketless door design, easy-to-clean porcelain interior, and simple controls are also high points for these ovens.

Here is a link that might be useful: Thermador CT230 Outdoor Vented Oven