I think it is possible to go overboard, or be lured overboard, by the grooviness of a ''digital'' oven temperature setting. When you set the digital oven control to ''325F'', most ovens don't actually hold 325F, they turn on and off and the temperature swings around. ''On'' at something like 300F and ''off'' at something like 350F. That assumes the oven is perfectly calibrated which often isn't the case. With that much error and fluctuation, the apparent precision of setting the digital control to ''325F'' versus the apparent imprecision of turning a knob to ''325F'' is - well, it is an illusion. If precise oven temperature really matters, you'd want to use an oven thermometer placed in the same spot as the food. But does it matter? Does the food really care if the temperature is swinging around in a range of 300F to 350F, or would a range of 285F to 335F, or a range of 315F to 365F, work just as well? I really doubt it matters. You're not going to cook anything to an internal temp much over 200F anyway, so the oven temp just determines how much time it takes to get to the desired internal temp, and how browned the exterior gets by then. But those are very much influenced by the food (size? thickness? moisture?) and the cooking method (covered pot? foil? rack?). Bottom-line, the fancy digital temperature controls may sell ranges but I don't think they help cook food. I'd personally not care about that feature. The timer feature would be more important to me, not so much for cooking food but to ensure that I don't accidentally leave the oven on all night.

Weissman, actually I guess it is the bottom of the U - when I said top, I was thinking of an upside-down U as it's at the top of my kitchen. Does that make sense? You walk into the kitchen and the galley is on the right with the range at the top of the upside-down U shape. I'm one of those spatially-challenged left-handers! Thanks for all of the input. We also have to find a range hood that will work well and fit in the existing space above the range. We will be removing an OTR MW and installing a vent hood - more complications and space/ducting limitations. We are trying to hurry to finish all of this by the end of July when my cooking buddy from New Orleans comes for a week - he and I always have a seafood cookoff while they are here.

My advice is to figure out which size pans you use the most and buy the best quality you can swing for those few pans and keep and re-use what you have in the other sizes and kinds. Put your money in sauce and saute pans/skillets where you use higher heat and fats rather than tall stockpots where you're either simmering something or just boiling water for pasta. I know I use the same 3 or 4 pans every day, and then the rest of them might get between one use per week to one per month. I had an OK-to-pretty-good stainless European cookware set before I got my higher-BTU range. It was quickly clear that I didn't need to replace the Volrath stainless stockpots as the ones I had worked just fine> But sauce and saute pans were a different story. I bought a couple of W-S on-special All-Clads (this was 20 years ago) and quickly found that they made a big difference in my (amateur cook's) control of the higher fire-power. Since then I've added some more AC (usually at sales or the good deals at W-S outlets). Truthfully, I don't actually use all of them equally. I find my 2 1/2 qt windsor pan, a 1 1/2 qt sauce/saute pan, 4 qt sauce pan and the big, 6 or 8 qt saute pan are all I really need. I think they have made a change in their handle design or finishing standards. I find the older handles to be better fitting (and smoother) than the newer ones, so I'm glad I'm not in the market for more. Aside from the AC, I use a range of 2 or 3 ancient cast iron skillets/chicken fryers and a dutch oven (inherited). I fequently use my beloved Pyrex glass double boiler (I can't the hang of the D-B insert that came with one of my AC sauce pans - I really need to see the water.) And I have a group of big to really, really large (I am a home canner) stainless Volrath stock pots (purchased at restaurant supply house). I have a few 50+ year old Revere Ware sauce pans that I grew up with that I occasionally fish out for old times sake. (But you have to watch'em like a hawk if you've got your cook-brain programmed in AC mode.) Cookware is something that's so tempting to me - and I find it hard to resist buying other pieces in the line as new ones are added. But I try do so since when I have bought extra pieces, they usually don't get as much use as I thought and then I kick myself for spending so much $$. And you definitely should avoid buying a full set of any one line. However, for my every day, core, AC pans, the $100-$300 -apiece! - they cost doesn't seem exhorbitant (in retrospect, I remember being pretty shocked at the time) because they are reliable, well-performing tools that rarely go a day without seeing some action. Aside from some evidence of use (a stirring patina and scratches on the bottom from burner grates) they look and perform as good as new. I can see no reason they won't give me another 30 years of service and then I'll leave 'em to somebody in my Will. I don't own anything with a non-stick coating. I don't think the coatings are healthy (no matter what the manu. says) and, anyway, I've never seen the point since I do just fine with my plain stainless and cast iron pots, without any evidence of sticking problems. I don't have a DW, so I would definitely know if I had the stickies. If a pan has a crust on the bottom when I plate, I dump some hot water in the pot and let it soak while I eat, then a nylon, or worst-case, a stainless scrubbie takes care of it when I wash up. And believe me, I am certainly not an expert cook who never scortches or burns things. ('Course when you've got a couple of hundred bucks invested in the pan, no way are you not going to take the trouble to clean it up!) Unless you exclusively use well-seasoned cast iron skillets (and will continue to do so), I think the first better-quality pot I'd suggest purchasing is a saute pan, or french skillet. That way you can try out the new cookware line with a pan that's intended to be used with high heat and a bit of fat. That's where I see the biggest difference in cooking technique and success among the different pans. The next would be a larger sauce pan where you'd be sweating some veg. or actually working with a sauce. You won't see to much of a difference with a "sauce" pan that's primarily used for boiling or reheating liquids or steaming veg. It's mostly where you're actively using heat in the transformational alchemy of cooking, not simply boiling fluids, where you'll see the biggest difference with your new range and better quality pots. L

>>> but after the salesman explained how hot the oven doors get and how much extra heat they give off to the room, I took Bluestar off my list. (I have relatively young children, I live in an area with hot summers, and I don't have air-conditioning in my kitchen. * * * So...thoughts on whether it would make sense for me to spend several thousand dollars more for a DCS or a Wolf vs. a standard Frigidaire or equivalent?There are no simple answers to that last question, as Geoffrey_B has pointed out. But, let me offer a few additional considerations. Apart from being marketed as premium-priced, aesthetically fashionable luxury goods, pro-style gas ranges have multiple full-range burners that can go from highest usable heat to the barest simmer. Do you have times where, like gk7 described above, you will need several high-power burners at once? Or, like me, does your production cooking find you often running four (or more) large pans at high heat at a time. Pro-style ranges like the Wolf and DCS have cooktops that are spacious enough to fit all four large pans on at one time, a convenience that is handy for me with all the entertaining I do. While we all know cooking for five can be serious production-style cooking, how often will you be simultaneously running four (or more) 12" diameter pots and pans? Or, will it be a mix of pans and sauce pans which will fit together readily on the stovetops of the Frigidaires and GEs? Going with a 36" DCS or Wolf will increase the stovetop spaciousness, and that is an oft-discussed reason that folks here have cited as a benefit of the larger ranges. Practically speaking, If you really want that spaciousness, you have to buy a 36" pro-style range and you pay a premium for that. Only you can decide if that extra spaciousness is worth it to you to pay the serious price premium. For griddles, consider that the built-in ones for the Wolf (and probably the DCS) have only a 10 or 11 inches wide cooking surface. IIRC, there have been posts here stating that some find these griddles can be a pain to clean and maintain. For around $100, you can get a significantly larger and generally well-regarded Chef-King 14x23 carbon steel griddle that likely will heat as evenly, be easier to manage and clean, and can be stashed out of the way when you do not need to use it. You can use it as readily on a 30" range, too. The larger burners on the DCS and Wolf can make it bit easier to get even heating on that kind of griddle -- major brand stoves will likely have burners of differing sizes (and a small one in the back) which makes it harder to manage a large griddle. As for not wanting to fire up a big oven for a single lasagna --- and for limiting summer time heat build-up, as well --- you might consider a countertop oven like the Breville Smart Oven. (There are BSO threads here and at Chowhound.com that discuss these benefits in detail if you haven't already looked at this option.) One advantage of the large ovens in 36" ranges is being able to fit in full size sheet pans. Several 30" pro-style ranges (such as Blue Star) also may allow this, but you've already ruled them out. The question is, how many full-size sheet cakes do you plan on making? Or, do you think you might be regularly needing to bake three full-size sheet pans of biscuits at a time? (I know somebody who does that several times a week, but they're running a dude ranch.) You mentioned making a lot of muffins. How many muffin tins do you have? I once helped a friend whose own oven died right before she was ready to bake a lot of muffins for a bake sale. Between us, we came up with six muffin tins. I found that I could put pairs of them side-by-side on three racks in the oven in my 30" range. The oven in a 36" range is a few inches wider, but not wide enough to add another muffin tin to each rack. So, "muffin" production is probably not going to be factor for you in choosing between a 30" and 36" range. But, speaking of oven size, do be aware that some major brand 30" gas ranges will have deeper and wider ovens than on the 30" DCS and Wolf ranges you are considering. The ovens on the Wolf and DCS are rated to have capacities around 4.5 cu ft., as do those on numbers of major brand stoves including the higher priced ones. Plenty big enough for a 25 pound turkey at Thanksgiving along with a casserole or baking pans. However, some of the mid-level and higher-priced major brand gas-ranges have oven cavities that are a couple inches taller and deeper giving them capacities of 5 cu. ft and 6 cu. ft. More stuff at Thanksgiving and such times. Some are big enough that you can put half-sheet pans or cookie sheets in side-by-side and have 4 or 6 pans baking at one time. This extra capacity will matter to some folks and not others, and that will affect the calculus of whether a pro-style range will be worth it to you. Looking at your points about small children, hot summers and no a/c in the kitchen, I have to say that the ovens in virtually every all-gas range that I know of can make a kitchen uncomfortably hot in the summertime. It is not so much heat radiating from the door and sides --- some of which you get with electric ovens, too, btw --- the heat that comes from having to vent combustion by-products. The vents are on top of the stove. That can venting can heat your kitchen and it won't be radiating from the doors and sides. As true of major-brand ranges as well as the pro-style models. It is the nature of having fire in the kitchen. I'll defer to nycbluedevil on the Blue Star door issue, but note that some folks have posted complaints about some older versions of the BS ranges (from before 2012, IIRC) having door heat problems. So, even if BS has solved the problem, the salesguy might simply be parroting old info. Or the appliance store may have recent experience. One thing to be aware of with pro-style gas ranges like the DCS and Wolf is that the spaces between the top and bottom of the oven doors and the top and bottom of the framing are larger than on major-brand gas ranges. This gap allows venting to cool the oven doors. (Major brand ranges have narrower gaps because they different arrangement of the vent slots.) If your young children are still crawling on the kitchen floor or have compulsions to poke the fingers into any visible gaps, the heat of the back of the spaces could be a concern. Also, the top burners on gas ranges will have significant waste heat from the stovetop burners -- again, that's just the nature of cooking with fire in a kitchen and will be as much of a problem with major-brand ranges as the pro-style ones. Theoretically, it could be a bigger problem with the pro-style units because somebody could decide to run three huge fry pans and three huge pasta kettles simultaneously at maximum heat and the pro-style ranges have more big burners than standard ranges. But other than those mad-chef scenarios, the problem isn't particularly different for the pro-style all-gas ranges and the major-brand all-gas ranges. One point to consider, though, is that the pro-style ranges heavy-duty cast-iron burner grates and parts absorb and radiate more heat (and radiate it longer) than the thinner grates on most major brand ranges. (With some major-brand range models, such as the GE Cafe stoves, the grates are substantial enough to be indistinguishable in heat retention.) With those heat concerns, I have to ask if your kitchen has 240v service and, ifso, whether you have considered induction ranges as an alternative? Several of them have good sized ovens with strong convection capabilities and might serve you as well or better than the gas ranges your are considering. Plenty of power on the stovetops, too, and comparatively safer for small children in the kitchen. Also, several of them will allow you to use a large griddle that spans a couple of burners. A couple of the current induction ranges even provide a way to link two burners to do this. Finally, valid and informative statistics on appliance longevity is difficult to come by. A few years ago, the National Association of Homebuilders surveyed consumers on the longevity of ranges. They found the average was something like 13.5 years for electric ranges and 15 years for gas ranges. However, that turned out to be as much about how long people kept their ranges as how long the ranges actually lasted. To put it another way, it can be hard to find a solidly-built major-brand gas range without electronic controllers and many of them also have self-cleaning ovens. Those controllers can and do affect the longevity of major brand ranges, and some of them will fail as a result of heat from the self-cleaning cycles. Finding a very capable, heavy-duty gas range with minimal electronics is pretty hard until you get to ranges like the Wolf and DCS all-gas ranges. They are manual oven cleaning rigged with minimal electronics. Those that they have are modules and that are relatively simple, readily available, and replaceable by any reasonably handy homeowners. These are things like the spark modules that run the burner ignitors. That simplicity fixability does have an appeal and can contribute to perceived longevity. Also, the Wolf and DCS have heavy duty cast-brass burner components. They are much more stain-resistant than the cast aluminum and porcelain-enameled burners you find on most major brand ranges. Ultimately, though, every range represents a mix of choices and tradeoffs. The hard part is figuring out what those are and which ones matter to you. This post was edited by JWVideo on Fri, Oct 24, 14 at 18:43