That's a problem with air fryers as well. Once we realized we were going to use ours a lot, and after realizing that using tons of aluminum foil would be super-wasteful, we ended up getting a set of reusable silicone trays from Amazon, which we can just toss in the dishwasher.
We didn't get either -- the sourdough starter was too labor-intensive, we couldn't take the time to go shopping for those other gadgets.
Yeah, I didn't go down the sourdough rabbit hole, due to inadequate kitchen space. One day.
All frying is pretty spattery and our built-in metal tray is also riddled with little holes that requires really getting in their and scrubbing to clean. Hence us going with the silicone trays to use instead, which cuts the mess way down.The dishwasher is the person typing at the moment in our house.
The problem I was referring to is that at least the combine-function toaster/convection/air fryer had a cooking surface that had a large number of relatively small holes in it. The one time I tried it I quite liked the result, but getting that thing clean...
It sounds like this isn't necessarily intrinsic to air-frying from your response.
No holes in the silicone tray. They're basically like high-sided pie pans.
I think the oven makers have more legal liability than the makers of the silicone trays and if their ovens don't cook as well out of the box, they're looking at a huge potential loss in sales, so they want to maximize how well it works.
