I have the same range, circa '04. I've noticed that I get similar staining around the edges of my disk bottomed pans (sitram, demeyere) but not to any extent as much on my fully clad pans. Other than mix and gas pressure adjustments, the burner design appears pretty immutable, so it well be the nature of the beast. Other for an initial sear, having the gas about half way from medium to high is where I am most of the time, and it's fine. 2 fyis given that mine is couple of years older: the ignitor on the IR broiler went, and I've resorted for stirfry resting the wok directly on the smaller burner cap rather than using the wok grate--vast improvement as the flames bathe the round bottom of the wok and give a much better char. As for the Bluestar, let's just say that when that option was brought up, the resulting level of domestic discord was a little on the punishing side. Also, I have the charboiler and would hate to give it up.

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.

So glad to come across this post. I am in nearly the same position. A 30" gas Kenmore Elite is supposed to show up next week and I am not excited! Nearly all my research on the Kenmore was positive and price wise it was good. I wanted a 30" gas burner, convection oven, slide in. Reading not so good reviews on the GE Cafe or any others such as KA or Electrolux (and and a significant up in price from the Kenmore) - sent me to the Kenmore. But honestly I don't trust the back control panel to last long & really don't like the look or need the features. I just want to turn the stove and burners on and off. We seriously considered the Bertazzoni but the oven was way too small (it is very pretty and basic functioning) and next thing we know are looking at Wolf for more than 3x the price of the Kenmore! It is amazing how you can mentally upgrade. We love to cook but spent the last 4 years with an ancient hotpoint that only had three functioning burners and was fine (my husband not so much :) I am glad to hear good things about the Cafe & others. Any more input on those 30" slide in "mid range" stoves - KA, Electrolux, GE - would be wonderful. And I am going to check out the NXR. Thanks.

Sorry, just took a look at this thread again and noticed your question...by the time I got to Miele, I had decided on induction, so I didn't give the Miele an actual test drive. I did give it a pretty thorough inspection at the Miele place, though, and thought it was a very sexy range -- and the performance seemed very similar to the Wolf dual fuel. I say that b/c the Miele also has the stacked burners, which I really liked, but the BTUs are higher than Wolf (which top out at around 16k, I believe -- Miele was closer to 20k or so -- I can't quite remember). The Miele ovens on the 48" range were very nice -- the smaller one is a speed oven, and the bigger one is a regular convection. The speed oven wasn't a big plus for me personally, since I really wanted a steam oven as a second oven, but there are people on this forum who love their speed ovens. One thing I really liked about the Miele oven, which Wolf doesn't have, is the burst of steam option, which is great for baking (you can program up to 3 bursts of steam for up to 6 min. each during cooking). I didn't care that much about the MasterChef options on Miele, but again, others love these. At any rate, the Miele seemed very similar to the Wolf, I liked the steam option on the oven better and liked the Miele burners better (also, if you're interested in a grill, theirs was excellent and seemed very similar to the Wolf, which I think is the best in the business). If I had stuck with a range, I would have been very tempted by the Miele.