It's great to read the messages from those of you who are using your Lacanches. My Cluny, in French Blue with the traditional top, is on its way to my kitchen. I can't wait to see it installed (along with the counters, cabinets, floor, etc.) I spent many hours debating the Traditional vs. Classique. We went for the Traditional for a variety of reasons. Four burners is more than enough for us. I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever had all four burners going at once, and the 15k burner will have plenty of power for us. Since we don't need five burners, we thought why not go with something that functions differently than a regular burner? My husband is excited to experiment with it and learn how to cook on it. The French Top throws off a good amount of heat, and since we are in Massachusetts that will come in handy. There are only two months a year when the heat doesn't come on in our house - July and August. Even June and September have some cool days. I can see where if you live in a warmer climate it would be a problem, but in chilly New England it will be great.

Our 9 month build became a 2 year project. Sigh. Why do we think we will always be the exception? I suspect we are all pretty particular about our projects-a reason we love this range. And I do love my range, my new house, my new kitchen. To those in process, you do eventually 'forget' the painful times. Joeboldt post was terrific. Covered many things I would consider important. Including the oven light-I keep a flashlight in the drawer beside the stove! I love the efficent size of my Cluny ovens and quickly adjusted to smaller cookie sheets. I bake a batch each week, and now bake fewer at a time. We are only 2 at home, but entertain frequently. I no longer need dozens in pantry. We prefer smaller turkeys. We usually cook two at a time. Eleven pounders are great. We like to do one in the bbq and one in the oven. Had an excellent Emeril brine this yr that made a heck of mess in the oven. I like a clean oven, but am not as obsessive as I was in the beginning. I appreciate the tip on the parchment with the pizza-hate the cornmeal mess, too.I cook with a lot of parchment, special order, cut to size for my cookie sheets. Hadn't thought to remove it part way through and feared the high heat so will try that. Did pizzas on the bbq during the summer and it was fun. Thanks for the reminder of the tech link. I have had burners that could use an adjustment-I have adjusted instead and love usuing my simmer plate during the winter-would be nice to adjust a burner lower for summer tho'. Hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday season-this site was a great benefit to me during my long wait. I found it took about 6 months to get really comfortable in my new house and kitchen and today cannot think of anything I would change. Such a trauma to get there-and can't remember the things that didn't work out and those I had to eliminate. Enjoy-the food prep is such a special part of the season. Gives us great joy to share the experience with others.

So Finally everyone, I have cooked on my Lacanche! It did not change my life by itself but having my house in Italy might. Might first impression and this relates directly to our new member cheril27, "If you buy professional equipment, you will make a professional mess!" I missed Luis and Raul as I cleaned the spattered olive oil off everthing. The stove is very to clean and did not mind it. In the outskirts where we are. we use bottled gas and the range made funny buzzing sounds like the sound effects they use when dipicting buzz bombs over London. The flames where very hot. I could only simmer on the smallest flame. I really like the simmer cabinet. It is a super crock pot and will be a great help when I do a formal 6-7 course dinner. I bought a plancha (flat griddle) and I love it. Besides the French toast and hash brown thing, it will double as a French top when I need it. The hood by fornair is fantastic. Really pulls the air up and out with great light. In Italy it is law that there be thermocouples to stop the gas if there is no flame. Why not here in the US? On my range if the flame goes out the gas is shut off. Makes sense no? According to French Ranges this is not available here. I love the range with no qualms at all. I am yet another one who sight unseen spent more money than I should have by far and I am walking away content with my purchase. My favorite thing? The maroon glace. The kitchen just would not have had the same finess without it. Here are two shots of the nearly completed kitchen. It still need some warming up but I'm happy.

The difficult to clean bit was promoted by Wolf — according to our local Wolf sales folks. Background: The least expensive manufacturing situation is to make the exact same thing over and over and over. E.G., all sealed or all open for instance. It's more expensive to try to build both as it requires additional design work, more parts to be stocked, increased manufacturing time and machines, double the QA effort, increased effort writing user and technician manuals, more training for CS folks, more marketing effort, etc. Over time Wolf chose to focus on pro-look aesthetics over functionality. They chose to go after the consumers for whom looks was more important than functionality. From a sales revenue standpoint this was a very good choice as the 'Wolf Look' was/is very popular and the number of people who wanted the look is greater than those who want actual functionality to cook on. Offering sealed burners rather than open provided valuable marketing blurbs - 'easier to clean' and 'as easy to clean'. This was pumped out to sales folks all over. What they didn't want is DCS or Thermador telling the people that their ranges were easier to clean than Wolf. In reality, for people who want a spic-and-span-always-looks-brand-new-never-been-used kitchen then sealed burners are better. They are a bit easier to keep new looking. But only a bit, not the huge FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) difference that's been promoted. It's similar to FUD spread by Ford about electric cars and how awful they are or the FUD spread by Monster Cable about how much better stuff sounded over their cables. FUD is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Wolf still makes good stuff but as has been discussed, their sealed burners are not a cooks best friend. They waste a lot of heat/gas, they are hotter for the cook to cook on vs an open burner due to much of the heat going around the pan rather than under, often do not heat as evenly, etc. What's interesting is that Blue Star are supposedly going after more serious cooks but then have an inferior (vs Wolf) thermostatic griddle (flat top) on the RNB, only offer their higher BTU burners paired with an even more inferior burner-top griddle, have rack ladders that are too narrow for many pro pans, etc. They got the burner shape right but then miss on so much else and for no good reason. Interestingly, they also missed on their hood offering by putting out the exact same thing with the same problems as is available from every other consumer pro-look option rather than offering a hood with actual better functionality. Their product marketing decisions seem amazingly bad. There's a gob of people who want a really good range, a really good range hood and are willing to pay but BS doesn't want to take advantage but instead wants to try to partially compete with Wolf.