Hi- I too am looking at purchasing all new appliances. I am on a limited budget and decided on the Kitchen Aid Architect II line for the fridge, ovens, dishwasher and microhood. However, after finding this site and others, I am very concerned with the oven issue. Is there a way to determine if the "problem" has been fixed? such as a manufactured date? I am also now considering the following as I would like to keep all the same brand: Jenn-Air, GE Profile, Frigidaire I'm in a bit of a hurry to finalize, as my cabinets are being made as this is being written and I want to make any changes for size as soon as possible. Any comments are greatly appreciated. Also, anyone have information on the Caldera Arrow Touch Gas Cooktop? Thanks.

These are the exact 2 ovens I have narrowed it down to! I've heard that Thermador has fixed its old oven problems (missing insulation) -- but I am still a bit wary and it is more expensive. On the other hand, I love the look of the Kitchenaid KBES209BSS, but I have seen people posting reports that there is a long pre-heat time and loud fan. My current GE Profile oven (which just died) takes a while to heat, and the fan is fairly loud, so I am wondering if the Kitchenaid is about the same -- which would be acceptable. I really like the look of the Electrolux, but was warned off them because of poor customer service. Did you get any of these? And what do you think so far?

charlyinfl, Thanks so much for the suggestion. I was excited when I read your post and could hardly wait till this morning for my (engineer) husband to test the oven. If the bake coil wasn't working it would explain everything. Alas....it's working fine. At least it's heating up as expected. I called KitchenAid for service tho, because the bread dough proofing function doesn't work at all...the oven doesn't get the least bit warm...and I'm hoping that the serviceperson will have some ideas about the other problem too. (Kitchenaid says it's normal for the broil element to come on while baking, and didn't offer to have someone look at it.) This must be my bad day tho...Kitchaid aid phone customer service say "offices temporarily closed"...and their online scheduling service is also not working. But I'll persevere with this, especially since you say yours works fine. I sure hope it's fixable. Did I mention that my big Christmas turkey was all brown and dried out on top in just 1 1/2 hours, at 325 degrees, with the roast-pan cover on! If I can't get this resolved I think I'm going to bite the bullet, pay for a new oven and the cost of building it in, and get back to normal in my kitchen. Thanks again for trying to be helpful. I'll keep you posted. Carly

Here is my report as promised: I made my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, and brought a batch of cookie dough balls to the store. The KA demo lady never did show up, so I just experimented on my own. First I turned the oven on regular bake at 350ú to see if I could hear the fan. The air conditioner fan in the store was very loud, and I could hear no oven fan at all on regular bake. I got impatient waiting for preheat, so turned the oven to convection bake. I could hear the convection fan, but it was very quiet, especially given the air conditioning noise. Convection bake preheat went much faster. Maybe ten to fifteen minutes. I proceeded to cook the two cookie sheets in the oven, on the 2nd and 4th racks. The recipe is normally 375ú for ten minutes, so I did 350ú for 9 minutes. I should also say that I used my regular flat, air insulated cookie sheets, which some say not to use with convection, as they keep the bottoms from browning as much as they would with a regular cookie sheet, which is supposedly not necessary with convection. The cookies came out perfectly, rose well, crunchy outside, chewy inside. The cool down fan continued after I turned the oven off. Still very quiet. However, the salesman told me that the demo oven is over four years old and that it was the oven that came out after that which had all the noise complaints. He also said that they had all been corrected in the factory for all new ovens, not by a complete redesign, but by whatever running corrections they are able to do as they go along. So I am still not 100% confident that I have heard the real thing. However, I am going to go ahead and order the oven, as the fan on this one was completely unobjectionable, at least so far as I could tell, and the cookies were excellent. Two other things the salesman suggested: Use the bottom oven preferentially when using only one oven, as it is further from the electronics and will improve the control board life span away from the heat. also, Never use the self clean, no matter what the oven, because the extreme heat is so bad for the electronics. He recommended instead heating a shallow, jelly roll type pan of water with baking soda on the bottom of the oven for an hour at 300ú, then wiping down the whole with a cloth. Not as effective as self-cleaning, but safer. That's all folks!