Like Marshall, I'm aware that I should be doing a detergent backflush every day, but tend not to. I measured the time for a full backflush and rinse at about ten minutes, and lots of mornings I don't have that time. This is an intermediate solution, which seems to work, and being baking soda is unlikely to hurt anything. I'm going to list the steps I do after pulling a group of shots, not to say that my way is perfect, but in the scientific spirit of letting others replicate my work, and perhaps figure out which steps are of benefit and which are unneeded:

Rinse and scrub the screen with a Pallo.
Wipe the basket and insert rubber backflush disk (or obdurateur if your machine, like mine, is French). Add 1/2 tsp of baking soda. Lock in a do a couple of pump cycles, then a portafilter wiggle.
Quickly rinse the remaining baking soda out and do a water portafilter wiggle.
Wipe dry.

This does not obviate a weekly full backflush with JoeGlo or similar, but does seem to keep the espresso from tasting bad in between, while adding less than a minute to my morning routine.

Best,
David

Not having tried, this is pure speculation, but is baking soda able to get the oils? In a dry state, smells perhaps, but I'm not so sure about anything else.

Not all of them, certainly, but enough for a low-effort daily ritual. Lots more than water. I was using it to clean a cappuccino cup, at which it's a lot better than detergent, and it occurred to me to try it on the machine. I once asked a chemist friend why it worked so well on tannin-based stains in general, and she said that it bound to them more tightly than the surface did. It's been many years, and I'm sorry to say I don't remember the details.

Best,
David

Having now used this technique for some time, I can offer some real conclusions. It works remarkably well, if you have a bit of patience. Now, I throw around half a teaspoon of baking soda in on a rubber backflush disk, and do a very short portafilter wiggle to get it up around the gasket. Then I do the rest of my morning ritual for five minutes or so. Finally, I do a rinse. Given that, it keeps things clean and fresh between weekly Joe Glo applications. The nice thing about the baking soda is that it is mild enough that the time isn't critical; it really can't hurt anything. I've left it for as long as an hour without ill effects, and at that point it actually has stripped most of the oils off.

Best,
David