Well, I don't have the BlueStar *yet*, but I am hoping to get one in the very near future. At those worst-case scenario temperatures, I'd think most neurotypical kids would yank their hands back pretty quickly with minimal damage. The only exception I can think of is a cruiser who worked their way along the cabinets and accidentally moved to the oven door for support - there's potential there for a serious burn while they're trying to figure out what to do. (OTOH, I grabbed a blowtorch by the nozzle when I was a toddler and I survived.) For most kids, I think it's a great chance to teach "hot - no touching!" without a trip to the hospital. My only *real* concern would be if you had a kid/friend/neighbor with Sensory Processing Disorder or Autism or some other neurological problem which might prevent them from feeling the heat properly. This is, in fact, the case with my daughter and the reason I've really been thinking this out. If she stood there with her face pressed against a 200 degree door, she really could hurt herself. Will this keep me from getting a BlueStar? Nah. Not at this point, anyway. Lucky for me, my Bug is seven now, smart as a tack and quite handy with the ray-gun style instant thermometer. So I plan on making her a chart of "safe to touch" temperatures and having extensive safety lessons. She needs to learn what "too hot" and "too cold" are, whether she can physically feel it or not. Learning to cook is important. Learning to be safe is important. And I think the risks the hot oven door *may* represent are an acceptable trade off for the benefits in my family's case. Just my perspective, though - only you know your kids and your cooking style and can decide what's right for you ;-) Good luck!

I've read about a similar case that turned out it was due to some loose insulation that got into the gas input line and ended up blocking the gas flow to the oven. In this case the situation was an extreme reduction in the ability for the oven to reach and maintain temp. First, does it take lots more than 30min to reach say 350F? Crank it up to 450F or 500F and see if it ever gets there. If it takes more than an hour to get up to your baking temp, then it's possible just the act of opening it up and and putting your food in is cooling it down enough that it takes another 30 min to get it back to your baking temp. Slow preheat can be caused by restricted gas flow. Here's a trick to try that I use to use. Preheat the oven and once it's at temp and holding for 10-15min, then open the oven door for a minute or so. Close the oven door and wait for the flame to come back on. Once the oven has just reached it's set temp but the flame has not gone out yet, open the door quickly and put your food in. Most oven's overshoot the set temp a bit to keep the it from going on and off and back on too quickly. This trick might help the oven hold it's temperature right after the food goes in. Another thing to try is take two oven thermometers and put one towards the front and one towards the back. Then bring the oven to 350F and see if there's a significant difference between the readings. You can move them around the oven to look for any pockets that might not be maintaining temp. Usually, this will be near to door or one of the heat vents. One silly question is when you do your baking, you don't open the oven to check on it do you? If you do, then the obvious answer is that the oven temp is cycling up and down. If you husband has an advanced digital temp probe, it should have an min/max record. To use it, put the probe in the oven (not touching any surfaces of course) and bring the temp to some set value like 300F or 350F. Then reset the recorded min/max temps but make sure it's at temperature before resetting. Let it go for 30-60min and check the min/max (and average if avail) values. They should not vary much. Good luck and let us know if any of the suggestions worked.

The AG's have a red light on the front that goes out when the temp is reached. It will go on and off as/when the gas cycles on/off to maintain the set temp. FWIW, we noticed our oven took longer, too, and the calibration checked out fine. It could be the learning curve of a new oven (e.g. old oven running hot) and it could also be going from a 30" to a 36" oven in our case. We suspect that food cooked in a larger oven cavity might take longer than in a smaller oven cavity. Think about it, a slice of pizza re-heated in a toaster oven heats up much quicker than in a regular oven, so it could be the same type of thing. If not, I have no clue.

We recently remodeled our kitchen. It was a full gut job, and the kitchen moved to a different location. We replaced all the old appliances. But to answer your question on whether we'd make the same choices for the range again? Yes, the Bluestar 30" RNB range was the only appliance that we kept from the old kitchen. It's now almost ten years old. I cleaned it thoroughly and replaced a couple of parts that were worn; and it's as good as new. We love this range. I wouldn't buy anything else. The burners are as close to commercial burners as you can get. And the oven works very evenly and reliably. Easy to get used to. The only downside is that it takes a long time to preheat (at least 20min). That's just a result of having such a big oven cavity. Even the 30" range holds a full commercial sheet. So, we are very happy that we also got 24" Miele CSO and SpeedOvens. They do a wonderful job supplementing our kitchen tools. In fact, if I had to give you one piece of advice then it would be to shrink your 48" range to 30" or 36". I personally don't see much use in having such a big appliance; too many trickle-down consequences for the overall design that don't make sense to me. Then buy a CSO from the money that you saved. You won't regret it. Ideally get the plumbed model. I see the theoretical appeal of a griddle, but in practice I have had much more mixed luck with it. I'd instead recommend buying a high-quality overlay griddle and the supplementing with a nice 14" round-bottom carbon steel wok and a couple of high-quality carbon steel skillets. Thanks to the great flame pattern on the Bluestar, you might discover that the combination of wok and skillet makes the skillet obsolete for 80% of what you'd normally use it for. As for the range as a whol, I have recently had a chance to cook on an old commercial Wolf range from way back before Wolf sold their residential division. It's such a fun appliance to work with, and it honestly feels a lot like cooking on my Bluestar. But it's nothing like modern residential Wolf ranges. I think they have dumbed down the design much to the detriment of some of the core functionality.