If you find an oven that controls temperature to within 2 degrees, please let us know. Gaggenau possibly. Claims and reality in this regard appear to separate somewhere after installation.

Good to know. IIRC when I used the probe for a meal I was happy with it, but yesterday when I was testing it to be sure I was explaining the display correctly I noticed that it displayed 135 in a cup of water, and checked it against my Thermapen which I trust, and that read 143. I might be being generous here, but perhaps there's some corrective logic built in because over time the metal of the probe will conduct heat faster than the meat will. I'll pay closer attention the next time I use it for real. Either way, good to note the ovens display to one degree.

Have to politely disagree with guadalupe. It's really all about how much browning/caramelization you want and how quickly you want it. If food browns too quickly, you risk burning the outside before the inside gets done. If it browns too slowly, then the food will be cooked on the inside without nice browning on the outside and cooking it longer will get the desired browning, but the food will become overcooked. A lot of times I like to broil on high or medium high, watch it like a hawk, and when the food is a nice light or medium brown, I'll switch to lower temp bake (300-350) so it browns only slightly more and can cook through without burning. I would broil most fish on high (medium if it's a thick piece) so that it browns without overcooking (fish overcooks so quickly-lean fish especially) . I would broil a thick steak on medium and then turn the oven down when it was nicely browned if it still needed additional cooking. I might broil some roasted potatoes on low (at the very end) to get some additional but even browning. Distance from broiler element makes a big difference in speed of cooking and browning. Higher up cooks faster but sometimes not as even as a little lower down. Watch out for foods with a lot of sugar in them (like a sweet terriyaki or ribs coated with a sweet barbecue sauce) or a anything with chunks of garlic. These can brown and burn more rapidly so sometimes a little lower heat and slightly lower down are a better bet. Beef, lamb and pork will do well on any setting, but If chicken cooks at too high a temp, the outside can get very tough even when the inside is perfectly done. Every oven cooks a little differently - you're just going to have to experiment a little and get to know your particular oven. HTH.

I am not an electrician, but I don't *think* even today's code requires 20A outlets unless there's only one outlet on the circuit. This is usually circumvented simply by using the far more common duplex outlet, with one outlet used by the 110V washer and the other left empty (it must be GFCI-protected). Again, the thinking behind this is obsolete - the extra outlet allowed an additional electrical device to be plugged in sharing the washer's circuit, and since the washer was probably a top-loader that depended on an external water heater tank for hot water (or occasionally an unheated front-loader that did likewise). Thus the shared circuit wasn't a problem since the washer used only a fraction of the allotted 15 amps, so the 20A circuit could handle an additional load of at least the remaining 5 amps (600 watts), plus whatever the washer didn't use for itself. But a rude surprise awaits anyone who buys one of the increasingly-common 110v front-load washers with a 1000w internal heater if s/he uses the other outlet to plug in a clothes iron. I think more homeowners would consider installing a 220v line for the washer if they understood the advantages. An analogous situation exists for buyers of the GE Advantium over-the-range ovens. For those not familiar with these, they look like commonplace over-the-range microwave ovens that double as a range hood/fan, and can function as a microwave oven but also includes halogen cooking lights and other thermal heating elements to allow for near-microwave speeds without soggy microwave taste. But accomplishing this requires a 240V/30A circuit, and nearly all of these are replacing either a 110V/15A over-the-range microwave or just a plain range hood - requiring a new circuit, a double-pole 240V/30A circuit breaker, new 10/3-plus-ground wiring from the electrical panel to the oven location, and a new outlet. No wonder GE soon added a 120V/15A version of the Advantium to allow installation without any electrical upgrades. But the 120V Advantium cooks much slower, and relies more on microwaves to speed up the cooking, so not only is it slower but it also sacrifices some of the crispiness that makes buyers want these in the first place in lieu of a plain microwave oven. Not surprisingly then, a substantial percentage of Advantium buyers pony up for the 240V version, despite the additional costs involved both with the installation and the appliance itself (which costs more than the 110V version). No other manufacturer has attempted to sell 220V over-the-range ovens though. 220V in the laundry room may be a harder sell, but I think the best opportunity is being overlooked by manufacturers - a 220V/30A combination washer/dryer that plugs into the 220V/30A outlet already in two-thirds of American homes (normally powering just the electric dryer). The only manufacturer currently selling full-size combo washer/dryers in the U.S. is LG - and they are 110V/15A units that are dog-slow. They first take a long time to heat the wash water, then take a long time to dry the clothes. An entire cycle can take up to 4 hours. But LG is pitching these as a washer replacement, perhaps to be used in conjunction with a separate dryer. But what if LG (or anyone else) marketed these machines as a replacement for both your washer and dryer? I think alot of people would like the idea of a single machine that they could throw their clothes into and have them completely clean and dry in less than 2 hours. Such a machine could do its work even faster than European-market 220v washers and/or dryers, because they run only on 15A circuits rather than 30A commonly used for American dryers. Of course, some buyers of these would-be 220V combo W/Ds would choose to hire an electrician to install a new washer outlet and keep a separate dryer around as an option. Another possibility for a commercially-viable 220V washer, combo or otherwise, would be to make a dual-voltage machine that could sense 240V power and kick in an extra heating element when plugged into 240V. I used to have a dual-voltage Westinghouse dryer that worked along the same principle, so it must be possible.