Last week while out of town, in a one hour time span, my display on the laptop went out, my watchband on my favorite watch broke and I swallowed a gold crown. Fortunately, was able to limp by with cheap monitor from Walmart. Walmart also had my favorite watch (I got the last one they had). Bad news.... when you swallow a crown, it is not covered by anytype of insurance (should have had the wife punch me before I went to the dentist, that way I could say it was knocked out) and since I was out of town, I was not really able to look for it. Glad things happen in threes, and like Rusty, I played guitar with my buddies for 3 hours last night which always makes things better.

I have the Miele steam oven. I love it! I would not want to be without it. I have zero experience regarding the Gaggenau, so I don't know what I may be missing, but I would definitely buy the Miele steam oven again and again. As you mentioned, the Gaggenau is plumbed and it does more than just steam. If you have the extra money and the extra room for the plumbing, maybe the Gaggenau would be a good choice. Starting with cold water, the Miele takes about 7 minutes to heat up to 215 degrees. I would be interested to know how long it takes for the Gaggenau to reach 215 degrees. Maybe it is faster since it is plumbed. So far I have used it for vegetables, potatoes, squash, eggs, fish, and steel cut oats. We are planning to purchase a couple of the larger solid trays for pasta and rice. It makes preparing potato salad a breeze. The Miele's Master Chef menu makes it very easy to use. You select the food and it does the rest.

JenC, I'm not sure why you'd want to keep your windows open in cold weather and pay extra in your bills for the air purifiers when you could just go outside to smoke. If you live on the 6th floor, then you will smoke less if you make a no smoking rule in your house (because it's much easier to smoke more if you don't have to put your jacket on, walk down stairs, go outside, and walk back upstairs!). Whether your house "smells" like smoke or not, you are subjecting your animals to second hand smoke. If it makes you feel better to say that you use all those gadgets and that your house is "cold", then so be it. But I think you know that it's not the right thing to do. I don't think anyone here should make judgements against smokers (like I've seen in earlier posts on this thread), because that is someone's choice and their right, just like alcohol or basically ANY bad habit. However, don't impose this choice you made onto your animals. They are helpless and cannot tell you to stop smoking around them.

A good combi oven should be able to replace your regular oven but allow you to have the optimum humidity for what you are cooking. This may or may not include steam. Dry heat is also provided. If I were just steaming vegetables, I would do it on my burners. I’m not that fond of steamed veggies though. I like roasting for most to let them brown or stirfrying. To really get an idea of how these ovens work read the manual for a Gaggenau combi. Some things may use 30% humidity which is the moisture from the food plus a certain vent setting. No added steam at all. Other things like bread baking will have steaming for the first part and venting so low humidity which promotes browning during the second part. I don’t have one because I have needed two big ovens and don‘t have room for it which would be a third oven. I may replace my wall oven with one at some point. I don’t know that I would ever use it to steam reheat leftovers, because a microwave is faster and it steams. I reheat things that need to be crispy in a skillet or regular oven. I add humidity to cheese cakes but some need to sit in the water bath to keep the temperature around the sides and bottom @ 212°F. You can set the oven to 350°F but the water stays @ 212°F. Usually combi ovens come with recipe books which would be recipes that work. The best use is probably bread baking where you might want a lot of steam at the beginning. You can do this in a regular oven but some don’t tolerate it all that well. A gas oven is very hard to keep added steam in because of the larger vents. Many say they use their combi oven the most which makes sense. It is smaller so heats more quickly. Some do anything that a regular oven does. When you bake/roast in a regular oven the food puts out a lot of moisture. You can easily supplement this with a pan of hot water for some things but the combi oven does this and provides the convenience of a structured sequence of more and less moisture. Some have sensors to monitor humidity.