Recommend your large kitchen appliances

[hillview]

I am ISO a
36 inch cooktop (gas)
30 inch double wall oven with convection oven (electric)

Please suggest yours!
thanks!
/hillary

[smiles33]

I still LOVE our Miele 36" gas cooktop. We did a ton of research on-line and then went to look in person. I really liked ones by DCS and Dacor, but after DH took his favorite pots and pans in to a gourmet kitchen appliance store to actually test out layouts, we ended up with the Miele. Each manufacturer seems to have different layouts with the burners. I'll be honest: it doesn't look pretty in the photos (the stainless steel looks a bit industrial/too shiny and the grates themselves didn't seem as "pretty" or elegant as others) but it ultimately looked much better in person.


We have a standard double electric wall oven by GE (builder's grade, so came with the house) and can't really recommend it.

[shilo]

cooktop: we have a dacor discovery 36"/6 burner cooktop. it's about 2.5years old, sees frequent use around here and i love pretty much everything about cooking on it. it's the first gas range i've had that has an indicator light in the knobs to let you know it's still lit (helpful if you're like me and pull something off the stove only to get distracted and forget to turn the burner off - the blue ring of light always catches my eye). i love that i can go all the way from uber hot/powerful searing to simmering sauces or melting fussy chocolate on the thing (so really high btu's all the way down to really low - without one of those annoying cycling on and off burners). i love that the grates are contiguous and easy to slide all the way across to move hot pots and pans around easily. i find the wok ring to work well. i find the griddle setting on the middle two burners to work very well (given adequate time to heat the griddle adequately). and i love the black sealed surface - i seriously clean the thing with a baby wipe once i'm done cooking and it's spotless. my one disclaimer would be that (knock on wood) i've never had to deal with a service call on the thing - so i can't vouch for decor CS as far as that goes. i've cooked a lot on my parents pro.level wolf cooktop, a fair amount on my BFF's pro.level viking range and a lot on the KitchenAid pro.level range in our last house. i'd pick this one again in a heartbeat.

wall oven: ge monogram. i have a love/hate relationship with the thing. but then i have yet to own/use an oven i love for all things. the good things about the monogram - the glides on the racks are amazing - it's like pulling out a really good custom cabinet drawer - smooth and easy. i like roasting in it. it seems to hold and return to consistent temp over prolonged roasting times and i've had good luck with everything i've tried to roast in it. all of the dials and panel features like timer and such are fine. now for the things i don't love... baking is hit or miss. the proofing feature on ours has never seemed to work right. we had the warranty folks out to look, they said it read within spec, but it still doesn't behave for an adequate rise. it does pretty darn well on longer bake times (especially if you let it preheat adequately to let all the racks and internal parts, not just the air inside the box come up to temp - ahem, DH notoriously does not, ahem). so things like muffins or quick breads are consistently great. the convection feature seems the same - things in the 20ish+ minute time frame come out fine. the annoying part of baking comes in with cookies and other quick turnover time items. i have tried everything you could possibly think of to get consistent performance out of the thing for baking cookies, but it just does not like me. switching out cookie sheets every 9 or 11 minutes or whatever the recipe i'm doing calls for and the thing looses it's mind. temps all over the place, not coming back up to temp, burnt edges and un-done centers on one batch, perfect cookies the next or vice versa, you get the picture. it's maddening. fwiw, i've done a fair bit of baking in my mom's thermador and it's the opposite. awesomely consistent cookies, but trouble with prolonged cooking times like roasts. go figure. my BFF is not wild about her viking range double ovens - says they are ridiculously small internally and the thing eats convection fans routinely. it came with their house, and she's ready to pitch it and start over. maybe they inherited a lemon, dunno.

hth,

[AnnieW625]

My I laws have Dacor wall ovens, and gas cooktop and they really like them. My grandma has a Viking cooktop and she likes it okay, but in the 16 yrs. she has had it and it has needed some work. She isn't sure she would get another, but in reality the set is nowhere close to being dead. She has had her Dacor wall ovens the same amount of time and has had good luck with them. My I laws have had theirs for 7 yrs., and no problems that we know of.

[smilequeen]

We have Dacor for both and we've been really happy with them. We've been in the house for 2.5 years and not a single problem.

[crl]

If you haven't already, I suggest checking out the appliances forum at gardenweb. (I have never had a separate cooktop/oven configuration so no recommendations here.)

Catherine