They're both awesome ovens. The Gaggenau completely blew my mind - these are my own personal favorite (although I do not own one).

That said, if it is the automatic cooking options you are looking for, I don't believe the Gaggs come with them. Do they? To me, the Gaggenau is phenomenal for its precision and the ready direct access to the heater settings. So, the Gaggenau interface was all about controlling the input: i.e. the source(s) and their proportional intensity(/ies) of the heat. The Miele Masterchef is all about interfacing with the output: i.e. the food you are cooking. Admittedly, that can be over-ridden on the Mieles if you choose not to use the MC functions, but it seems that that is what you are interested in, yes?

May want to look closely at the Gaggenau if the automatic cooking is what you're after, coz to the best of my knowledge, they don't have it. Also, that it is the Miele and the "new" Dacor's that have those masterchef features.

We went through the exact same decision. Your situation may be different, but here's what we found & how we decided:

Differences between Miele & Gaggenau convection oven controls: The Miele has quite a few programs built into it, so you can operate it by selecting food which then selects the time, temperature, & heat source, or pick manual controls as is done with almost every other oven. The Gaggenau has 9 different ways to select heating sources & positions, but no programs.

Differences between Miele & Gagg steam ovens:
Miele is steam only, and you must fill & insert a pitcher of water, and wipe out remaining water afterwards.
Gagg is a convection oven plus steam, so you can select any temperature, plus 100%, 80%, 60%, 30%, or zero steam. The Gagg is plumbed for automatically adding water and draining it out, making this very easy, and there's a purge button to remove steam before you open the door.

The steam oven is important to us, and we knew we'd be using it daily. Because we were building new, we could have it plumbed, so the Gaggenau combi-steam was our first choice.

We also wanted an electric convection wall oven. We didn't want to stack the Gagg combi with anything but Gagg because even in stainless, it has a unique look. Leaving the combi by itself, we considered a Miele under our wall Advantium, but decided the automatic programs of the MasterChef weren't that important to us, and we wanted storage drawers above & below our Advantium. Finally, the side opening door of the Gagg ovens was a major factor in our decision to choose the Gagg convection oven & put it under our Gagg combi. Both Gaggenau ovens perform amazingly well.

Meant to say we wanted storage, not drawers, above our Advantium. We do have drawers below.

The Advantium does have MasterChef-like programs for both its speed cooking & microwave functions. We use them, but use the manual controls far more. We really appreciate the heat source control of our Gaggenau convection oven, so in hindsight that turned out to be more important for us than having MasterChef programs in our convection oven.

Wow, what helpful and immediate responses! I can't thank you enough. One additional question, if you don't mind? From browsing the forum, I see that most people are very happy with Miele customer service, but there are mixed reviews for Gaggenau. I realize this is an area where the variables make all the difference, but in general, how do both companies rate with you? Is one so much better or worse that it would affect your choice?

GIZMONIKE -
We'd love to hear about your experience with Gaggenau customer service.

Thanks, this discussion is so helpful!

Gaggenau is an engineering oriented company. They make a superior product and if you want it they'll sell it to you. They don't have a lot of customer service hand holders, but if you should have a real problem that is beyond the serviceman's ability to solve they will take care of it.

Gizmonike is correct on many of the features, but I think the new Gaggenau ovens with the LCD interface may do more automatic functions. I saw one in operation, but wasn't interested in that aspect and didn't pay good enough attention to be sure.

One thing to be sure of with either is that you have a local serviceman who is not just authorized but experienced, and who will likely be there in 5, 10, 15 years. You shouldn't need a lot of service, but when you do need it it's important. Though I do know someone who lives in the middle of nowhere but wants the best. If he needs service on anything he flies someone in :D

Gizmonike & Plllog -
Thank you both for the very helpful info!

We're putting a "27 oven under the pantry counter. And a 30" under the island counter. Both convection ovens.

We were able to locate a 27" aluminum Gagg. And would also use the new 30" Gagg.

Or we'd get the Miele's!

Also looking at an electric cooktop with no knobs: either Miele or Gagg.

Which brand of convection ovens would you choose? Thanks!

My friend has two Gagg. ovens and says they are the best ovens in the world.

Maybe she is a bit biased, but they look really cool and I particularly like the side-opening door. Something that could be very helpful for a shorter person, too, I imagine.

Anyway, they were too pricey for me, so I'm getting a Miele Master Chef. So far, Miele's post-sale customer service has been very impressive, although I've only been asking questions and have had no issues yet since my appliances are not yet fully installed.

I have neither a Gaggenau oven nor the Miele - I've cooked with them at the showrooms however. The Gaggenau and the Miele appliances I do own however, have not yet required service so I cannot comment on their service department.

I have a Bosch (owned by Gaggenau's parent company) and the one time I did require "service" on it - well, actually, it required my reading the diagnostics in the back of the manual so colour me embarrassed as the service guy needed and knew to do just what the manual said to do - I had an interesting outcome. I used the BSH website to find a service company and the chaps who came out were prize chumps. Of the first water. I think I may have thrown the idiot out and he's lucky I didn't throw the appliance out after him - please no lectures on homeowners behaving badly. I simply don't suffer fools gladly. I then called the service department of the company I purchased from who were trained by BSH on their appliances. That chap knew just what to do.

plllog said it perfectly - the Gaggenau's are extremely well engineered. That is ultimately what I wound up testing in my oven comparisons. The Miele and the Wolf I tried were extremely good ovens and produced extremely good results. The Gaggenau though! Hot damn. This is an engineer's machine. The output was not any better than that of the Miele - because make no mistake the Miele is an outstanding cooking machine. However, the Gaggenau - every sort of temperature test I threw at it, it fared *so* well, I rather could not believe my own readings. The Gagg has 4 or 5 or something temperature sensors distributed around its cavity to ensure the most representative feedback possible. The oven heater controllers however, must also have some suitably sophisticated feedback mechanism to respond to all those feedback measurements coz all my temperature sensors - no matter where I placed 'em and how I juggled 'em, they consistently recorded perfectly on-setpoint temperatures. I'd open the oven and you HAVE to believe that the temperature in the cavity would drop as it did in any oven I had otherwise tried; but in the Gagg - I couldn't record any change. (I suspect it did - I mean, it just *had* to have. But I suspect that the response times of the oven are smaller than the time constants on my sensors, and it accommodated the drop in temperature before my guages could measure and note the drop in temps.)

It got so that I removed the food from the Gaggenau at some point coz my tray of whatever was getting in the way of my experiments.

So, yah. I believe plllog when they say that the Gagg is engineered to high heavens. I would not be shocked if you told me that Gagg ovens provide vibration isolators to the cavity.

Now, a rational person might ask if an oven that cooks edibles and comestibles which aren't say, as sensitive to sub-unit precisions as say crystal vapour deposition processes really needs so much sophistication. Well, I would not be one of those persons. :-)

That said, lets see, the last time I turned on my oven was in January (08). The last time I lit my stove for anything other than tea was Tuesday (it is Saturday today). I probably wouldn't spend 4K on an oven.

I also liked the interface on the Gaggenau very very much indeed. Aside from the Kuppersbusch (I think) this was my runaway favorite.

We got a Gagg combi stem and a Miele MasterChef a year or so ago and have been very pleased with both. They are stacked one over the other and I think they look fine. I keep meaning to post pictures, but haven't yet.

I must say that we don't use the Combi as much - probably mainly because we were so busy with the rest of the remodel I didn't take the time to learn all the ways to use it. We also have a counter top steamer in the island that we used all through a very long remodel, so I use that a lot. Don't ask why we ended up with so many appliances... I also should say that the combi functions as a regular oven so potentially you could have just that.

Mindstorm - you must come over some day and test all our appliances.

Considering the excellent performance and longevity of the Gaggenau appliances that I have owned, it should be a no brainer to continue to buy them. However, since I last purchased a Gaggenau appliance in 1989, the company has been acquired by BSH Home Appliance Corporation, which also manufactures Bosch & Thermador appliances, so there is no guarantee that a current model will perform the same as my old Gaggenau appliances. Since I have had such a bad experience with Thermador appliances and after reading so many negative reviews on the web concerning the failure of many different oven brands, I am convinced that appliances are not being manufactured with the same level of quality as in the past. Thus, regardless of cost, it is doubtful that any oven purchased today will have as long a service life as an oven made years ago. Miele has an edge for continuity, as it is still a small family-owned company.

I purchased a Gaggenau convection wall oven, low profile ventilation hood, two burner ceran hob and a four burner gas cooktop in 1989. After 26 years, the hood still works great as does my ceran cooktop, which I moved to my basement kitchen three years ago when I replaced it and my Gaggenau four burner gas cooktop with a Thermador five burner gas cooktop. When we had to replace our kitchen counters three years ago, I decided to also replace my Gaggenau cooktop because the grates were not made very sturdy back then, so they would move if you tried to slide a pot from one burner to another. A royal pain when you are cooking several items for a dinner party! I was unable to consider another Gaggenau cooktop because the BTU output of the burners had increased in the ensuing years and the configuration of the burners put the strongest burner too near my existing wood cabinets to meet code. The Thermador gas cooktop met my city's code because the highest BTU burner was at the center of the cooktop, so it was directly under the hood and not near any of my cabinets. Although my Gaggenau gas cooktop was then 23 years old, it worked perfectly and the stainless steel top and grates, despite heavy use, were in mint condition, so I was able to donate it to Habitat for Humanity. In contrast, my three year old Thermador stainless steel cooktop is very difficult to keep clean, especially between the star burners. The quality of the stainless steel and the grates seems to be of a lower quality than my previous Gaggenau had, so anything splashed or spilled on it adheres to the surface and bakes on. It takes a lot of elbow grease to clean the stainless steel surface or the grates, regardless of what type of cleaning product is employed. Thus, my three year old Thermador cooktop looks older than the 23 year old Gaggenau that it replaced! Another push toward buying a Miele oven.

As far as my Gaggenau convection wall oven, which finally died on Christmas Eve after 26 years of flawless performance, the only service call that it ever required was two years ago to replace the bulb that illuminated the temperature display. (It is impossible to access without service help.) My Gaggenau oven outperformed and outlasted a GE convection wall oven that quit after 7 years and a Thermador convection wall oven that I have had for only 6 years. My Thermador oven, which began reporting fault codes almost immediately after installation that prompted numerous service calls, now requires an estimated $1000.00 worth of repairs with no guarantee that those repairs will correct the problem. In fact, the service technicians, after consultation with Thermador's tech support, advised me to purchase a new oven! Apparently, Thermador ovens have issues with their door hinges, so although the oven door appears to be closed, it is not closed sufficiently to prevent heat from adversely affecting its various smart boards. Currently, the repair people and Thermador's tech support advise that I can replace the EOC board in my oven, replace the hinges, and replace the gasket around the door that has been singed because of exposure to the heat from the door not closing properly, but they cannot guarantee that doing so will prevent the oven from tripping fault codes! Per Thermador's instructions, each time that my oven trips a fault code and shuts off, I have to go down the basement to shut off the circuit breaker, wait five minutes and then turn the circuit breaker back on and hope that the process has cleared the fault code. Try having your cakes turn out properly with an oven that works like that! A vote for my old Gaggenau in the longevity department, but a minus because they are now made by the same company as Thermador. Another edge toward the Miele.

A further complication that I have encountered in trying to replace my two broken ovens is that most companies have discontinued their 27" replacement models, so I must reconfigure my kitchen to accommodate the installation of two 30" ovens. Thus, aside from the fact that I am a gourmet cook who needs reliable and accurate ovens, replacing my ovens is going to require a sizeable expense for the ovens and the construction that will be necessary to accommodate them. Thus, I appreciate hearing about your experiences with either Gaggenau, Miele or Blue Star convection ovens. I have not considered a Wolf or Viking because they were rated lower in baking quality by a leading consumer magazine and there are a ton of negative consumer comments about them on the web. My kitchen cannot accommodate a free standing or slide in range with ovens. Thank you for whatever help you can provide toward helping me to make a wise oven choice.

This post was edited by perovskia6 on Tue, Jan 20, 15 at 12:29

Gaggenau is a completely different product from Bosch and Thermdor. Gaggenau is made in Germany still, Bosch and Thermador are not.

I would not trust "leading consumer magazine" for baking results. I have seen them give the same oven in different products different performance ratings and pretty much all feedback here on Gardenweb of Wolf baking performance is superb. They have the blue porcelain issues though so I would be cautious for now.

That said paying more does not guarantee the oven will be a better baker. Electrolux has gotten many positive reviews here and is a much better value than lots of the high end brands.

> A further complication that I have encountered in trying to replace my two broken ovens is that most companies have discontinued their 27" replacement models, so I must reconfigure my kitchen to accommodate the installation of two 30" ovens.

Yes, it is very annoying that there are no currently available 27"w ovens with a side-hinged door. If you don't mind the usual drop-down door there are still several available from other manufacturers - I can personal vouch for the Electrolux.

> Gaggenau is a completely different product from Bosch and Thermador.

True for their ovens and smaller cooktops, less so for the 30"/36" cooktops and dishwashers

Yes, it's only the Gaggenau oven which is completely different, and even there, they changed the design to use the same racks as the sisters.

I have a five year old Gaggenau oven and combi-steam. I love them, and so far so good, but I think the pre-BSH ones were even better. Rhome410 had the Wolf with the horrible enamel cracking issue, but she thought that its dual fans baked more evenly than her current Gaggenau double oven. I only have uneven browning (I wouldn't call it baking, because there isn't a raw/burnt kind of dichotomy) if the fan is on and blows past the item being baked, then reflects off the window. It is easy enough to avoid that. :)

I'm sure Miele is a fine oven, but there are people who aren't so keen on their customer service, either, which is all centrally served. It used to be the best in the business, but I think they've had growing pains as they've expanded their US markets. I have Miele coolers, and when I've had issues with the freezer (operation issues rather than manufacture), I've called the number on the back of the manual and had great service.

With Gaggenau, service comes from the local guys, and is hard to get directly from BSH. It sounds like you have a good Gaggenau service company, that shouldn't be an issue.

Anyone can make a lemon. Even the low tier models, like Frigidaire, have fans who say their ovens are great.

I don't think you can go wrong with either. Keep in mind that sometimes things don't show on factory tests or shake loose in shipping and installation, so if you need service during the warranty period, it's not unusual, and that's why they have the warranty.

I know that the ovens are pretty much Gaggenau's only thing not shared with the rest of the BSH empire. However, perovskia6 was asking about ovens, not cooktops or dishwashers, so that is what I gave information about.

Gaggenau has been owned by BSH since 1995, so you'd have to go back quite a bit to get a pre-BSH model. I am not surprised the 1989 Gaggenau lasted 26 years, those things just ran forever. I partially attribute that to their relative lack of electronics: the switching between different combinations of elements with the convection fan was entirely mechanical, as were the actual thermostats that controlled the temperature. The only electronic part (and in my opinion the weak point) was the clock/timer. They have been discontinued for a while now so sadly if yours fails now, you are out of luck.

A while ago I found a mid 80s Gaggenau double oven on Craigslist. I saved the pictures and will attach one here so you can all see what Gaggenau ovens looked like almost 30 years ago.

This post was edited by hvtech42 on Tue, Jan 20, 15 at 22:19

hvtech42 I know you know that ovens are the only non-shared item but I wanted to clarify that for everyone else reading that may have thought every Gaggenau appliance was distinct from Bosch or Thermador-branded units. You're right about the clock - I just looked at a single-oven version of the oven above that someone local was selling for $25, and it seemed to work fine except for a clock that would only show 00:00. I wasn't sure if that affected anything else about its operation so I didn't buy it.

Someone in Stafford, VA is *giving away* a Gaggenau double oven of this generation on CL at the moment. Also there's a new-old-stock white version of the above in Philly for $200.

Does anyone know when these were first produced? My aunt has a very old Gaggenau oven that has a mechanical digital clock of the sort common circa 1970. The rest of the oven looks like a 1990 model.

This seems to be a dated exchange, the last entry being 2015, but I have 1985 white gaggeneau ovens. The convection with what they called the brick oven above. My clock/timer went some years ago though it shows the time intermittently but the timer doesn't work. I love the ovens. (Look basically like the photo above only white). Never have had anything else go wrong. However I am replacing my cabinets and counters and am afraid to have a 30 year old oven built into the new cabinets. It seems from these comments that the old ones might last forever?? Are the new 24" convection ones going to give as good service? Interested to know what others think

jude

You're talking about the Gaggenau ones? Yes, the new 24" should give good service. Have you looked at them? They may not have as much room inside as you're used to. The current standard size is 30".

Do you have a good Gaggenau service provider near you? It might be worth getting the clock fixed (if possible) and getting an opinion on whether your old ovens will survive being uninstalled and reinstalled. I'd be sorely tempted to do that, with a cabinet that was designed to be easily modified to accept a new model. I have 6 year old Gaggenau ovens and they're fantastic, but old ovens were just better in so many ways...

Thanks for your advise. Mine are the old 24inch ones. I don't really have a Gaggenau provider where I live, only a appliance store that sells them (sort of - they have a couple models). I am tempted to keep them, and your suggestion is great. I think if I purchased the new ones I would still go with the 24inch ones based on the placement in the kitchen (can't really change that) and a warming drawer as well. That would require slightly more space than the current double ones I have, so the cabinets might be easily changed. Thanks again. I was going to replace the clock once upon a time, but the quote was $800 before labour!