andiswife-I have a GE Cafe dual fuel range, and I love it. It has a huge oven and I have not had any problems with any of the burners. Yes, there is an oven fan that comes on, but to me anyway, it not that annoying, and it has never blown out the back burners. This range also sat in my garage for over 1 year before it was installed and it has always worked perfectly. I love the power boil and it simmers and I truly mean simmers. The thing with the griddle is that to use the griddle, you have to take off the grate. I tried to cook on the griddle with the grate on and I did take forever and did not heat up very well, but once I read the owners manual and it said to take off the grate, it was perfect. I have seen on this forum and on the kitchen forum complaints and boasting about every appliance manufacturer, so I guess you should just take everything with a grain of salt. Yes, I would buy a GE Cafe range again. I also purchased the GE Cafe vent hood, and I must say it is very quiet on low and med low. Does start to get loud on med hi and hi. Just my opinion.

I own a 36" Wolf DF and am one with porcelain issues. I love the burners with a great low heat and the oven is wonderful. I am looking to replace it though. After dickering with Wolf they have agreed to provide the part and $350 in labor. The problem is the labor starts at $800+ because they don't know what they will find and the time may vary depending on how fast the guys work. They will only guarantee the part one year. They used to replace ovens with this problem even when 4+ years old for a small fee. Most posters here and elsewhere have had more than one replacement and the replacements don't last as long as the one before. I don't want to risk inhaling or ingesting tiny glass shards when the liner starts to degrade. "I thought electric was a more consistent, and therefore better, option for baking/roasting? " "gas is better for roasting because of the moist heat. " Consistency has nothing to do with gas or electric, but bulk for thermal stabilization (providing radiant heat), air movement within the oven chamber(providing convective heat), placement of burners and accuracy of thermostat. Some companies seek to improve this by adding among other things,more insulation, more bulk, fan(s), a third and possibly a fourth element with computerized controls and and a thermostat with a narrower variance from the set temperature. When looking at humidity in an oven, you have to look past the immediate heat source and look at what happens with the oven and the cooking process. In general a gas oven has more ventilation through the oven chamber so the water that is a product of combustion is vented out along with more heat, so the heat is drier. Electric ovens are not ventilated as much so hold moisture from cooking. The moisture in the electric oven is beneficial the first half of baking breads and cakes because it allows the dough/batter to expand a little more, promotes starch gelatinization and allows better heat penetration of what you are baking. "Dry" is better the second half of the baking process. People seem to pay more attention and it makes more difference for bread. There are many ways people use steam for bread. "Dry" heat from a gas range or using the convection mode on an electric stove gives crispiness to a roast and may be better for some cookies, pies etc. External moisture has nothing to do with internal moisture of a roast. The amount of internal moisture is due to the temperature of the meat. Plus you have to pay a huge premium for dual fuel when in fact it does not cost the manufacture a lot more to make. You pay a premium for the additional elements, fans and the computers to make them run correctly. It would be up to the individual to decide what is huge and if it is worth it. They have fantastic 23k btu open burners with very even heat. No need for high maintenance tin lined French copper pots. What the heck does this mean??? If you have a burner with a flame pattern of 5-6 inches wide, if you use anything wider than 8 inches, you will benefit from a pan that has good heat conduction. Best is heavy gauge copper, lined in tin or stainless. Not everyone polishes. You can also get plied cookware with copper that goes in the dishwasher. Cheaper is aluminum available in several configurations including plied cookware. This is a very biased statement from a sealed burner owner that thinks dual stacking makes any meaningful difference. The purpose of dual stacked burners is to provide two separate burners each with its own range of heat. You would have to look at the range of BTU output for each burner to see the benefit. Rating by temperature is meaningless. I might have a BTU output of 325 and the temperature of what I am cooking could be 190 or 80 depending on the pan and what I am cooking. CC's 23k btu burners are capable of 145 degree simmer which is more than reasonable. Other than raw foodist, virtually no one needs or can use Wolf's 100 degree simmers. This is unbelievably presumptuous to pontificate about what other people should or should not find useful in their kitchen. I use low heat daily for -cooking a whole dinner or pot of soup in a LeCreuset pot using minimal energy -serving off the range, no worries about any scorching pastas, mashed potatoes etc -a short term sous-vide -anything that used to require a double boiler A few weeks ago I was making a syrup that had to be held hot while another step in the recipe was completed and even with the low simmer, it would not stop boiling. I could have "used" even lower heat. There is a whole big world of people that cook in many different ways. Wolf's sealed burners will not give you a decent stir-fry or Pittsburg steak while the CC will. Cooking is about the temperature of the cooking surface. The source of heat is just one component of this. A cook who understands how the properties of cookware work as well as how what you are cooking comes into play will be able to combine these things to come up with the right temps for the cooking surface on both high and low end. You can find blogs where cooks preheat cast iron to extremely high temps by low powered burners to cook pizza. Some restaurants cook a steak on a rock table side with no flame underneath. You just need to understand how to accumulate heat in your cooking surface. How are those pictures representative of the burners referenced? The CC is way off. I have cooked on many different open and sealed burners over 50 years. I agree with weissman that ease of cleaning burners depends on the build and also has a very subjective component. I think you have to avoid generalizations. Even the black enamel on the Dacor range we had was much more difficult to clean than the black on our current Wolf. This, an observation from my husband.

Does anyone have this range (or similar)? Likes, dislikes? Pros, cons? Model: PRD486GDHU 48 inch Professional Series Pro Harmony Standard Depth Dual Fuel Range PRD486GDHU Does anyone have the Pro Grand or Pro Grand Steam range? I've never wanted a warming drawer and doubt we would use the steam oven feature often, so doubt I would get either but comments are welcome. I've always hated the way our current dual fuel range (GE Monogram) sticks out further than the cabinets and would love the Harmony since it's counter depth. Will continue with 6 burners and a griddle. Need the large and small ovens, so smaller not an option. (I do not want wall oven(s).) This is for possible new lakehouse (LP gas). Thanks in advance for your comments.Allison

"Commercial bakeries use nothing but gas ovens." This is not true. If you are talking about bulk bakeries, they are more inclined to because it is often cheaper but they also have steam injectors to add humidity when needed. I know several specialty bakeries that use electric ovens. Many deck ovens in commercial kitchens are electric. I knew of a bakery that was called "the Electric Bakery". It really depends a lot on what they are baking. I know a baker that has specialty ovens for pies. This really has nothing to do with home ovens because they are a different breed anyway as they are expected to do many different things. "Dual fuel is excessively expensive, and overly complex for no benefit in performance ." Performance is different things to different people. They have different needs so there is no one size fits all. If I were selling appliances, the first thing would be to assess that person's needs and make individualized recommendations based on those needs. I most likely would never recommend ranges to begin with unless there was a compelling reason like space or cost issues or even a preference for "looks" over cooks. Pick out each component because it meets individual needs in the best way possible. As far as cost, you can buy electric ovens with features that have high utility for less than some gas ovens with limited features. Electric ovens can be complex, but so are our home computers and cars these days. This is not necessarily a bad thing. These ovens can have features that many consider helpful in how they use their ovens. It takes a computer board to coordinate fans, heating elements and tight temperature control. I love being able to control the direction of heat and fan speed in my oven. I can have air movement slow or fast to facilitate browning or not if I am baking a cake. It has a lot greater range of temperature, with or without the fan than many ovens gas or electric that cost a lot more. There is a learning curve with these features especially with the many choices something like Gaggenau or Miele give you. The combi oven is the king of control of the cooking environment but not in a range yet. The other side of the coin is some ovens have this figured out and others, not so much, so you have to read as many reviews as you can. To minimize risk if you want these features, buy the longest service agreement that you can. They can be difficult to evaluate and compare because a feature named the same name in two different brands can mean two different things. Even the term "dual fuel", in most ovens it means gas burners and an electric oven but 5 Star when they say dual fuel means a gas oven and electric oven together in the same range. You have to decide what is a benefit and what is a burden? No one answer. "could you please explain why all gas is fine" "All gas is fine." I might agree with that statement depending on how you use your oven but that in no way means they are the same and it in many cases gas is not the best choice. Gas and electric ovens are constructed differently. Because you have combustion for your heat source, another difference, gas ovens are vented more to remove products of combustion including water, so those products of combustion and humidity from food move out of the oven and into the kitchen. That may be good or bad depending on where you live, but how is that significant to cooking? It is much more difficult to keep added steam in a gas oven if you are doing that for bread or adding a pan of water for cheesecake. Because there is more of an air current, in a gas oven, this removes more moisture from the surface of what you are cooking. This inhibits starch gelatinization during the first part of baking so inhibits rise and changes the appearance of what you are baking. On the other hand, because it evaporates moisture from the surface and allows it to heat more quickly, the Maillard and other browning chemical reactions take place more quickly. This is why meat, vegetables and even baked goods brown more quickly. Will you notice? A lot of people say they don't. I have baked in gas and electric ovens for over 50 years and I used to attribute differences in outcomes to different ovens rather than a difference in fuel but with the many books and websites that have come out on food science, you can see the rationale for the differences in outcome that cooks report in cooking/baking forums. It was kind of a "aha" moment to put these comments with the science. All of the information coming out challenges what used to be conventional wisdom and yet it might be hard to see if you are not baking the exact same recipe side by side. You do see the same observations cooks make repeatedly in terms of cooking on cooking and baking forums and people seem to notice the difference more coming from electric to gas but you do see the occasional comment about excess moisture in some electric ovens when they are coming from gas. Most advertising literature and websites about ovens actually say a gas oven provides moist heat and electric dry but they are only looking at the heat source and not the oven as a whole and the process of cooking which provides a lot of moisture to the oven chamber. Another difference is that there are more and more features being loaded into ovens now as noted above, mostly electric but sometimes gas too. Some electric ovens have added steam. Combi ovens are very useful in their ability to control humidity and really make the case for buying ovens separate from the range top instead of having to pick the priority of the burners or the oven. I am not a fan of the current trend of hiding the bake element in electric ovens. Sometimes with pies, you need that bottom element exposed. It used to be you could put a tray under the element to catch spills. If you put it on the bottom now, it will melt. Some other things to consider. gas broilers are of two types. There is the traditional gas broiler, but they are not very good. Many prostyle gas ovens have an infrared broiler. They are very hot and even, but can be small. They are great for a couple of steaks but not so much trays of appetizers or broiling larger amounts. How big is the oven? Do you want a quick preheat or need room for full commercial sheets? Look at the rack size for usable space and size top to bottom. What is the temperature range, lowest and highest? What are the increments that you can set your temperature? 25F or 5F? Ovens are not an easy choice these days but I think it helps at least some people to realize the differences so you can at least make a somewhat informed decision.