This is a great thread, and thanks to everyone for the insightful information! I'm wondering if you can give more details on how you clean your Wolf CSO? I watched a video for Thermador's CSO and was a bit alarmed by the evaporator well in the bottom that one has to clean with a provided yellow sponge each night. Do you find that you need to do the same with your Wolf? We had a demo at the SZ showroom and they said a simple wipe down of any moisture inside would do. Also, the chef said that at home she only needed to refill the water when needed, 1-2 times per week (and she has a family of 5). The Thermador video also said that the water should be emptied out each night. What do you do to clean/maintain the water for your Wolf? Thanks for any info you can provide!

Agreed on the black. It looks punchy without the silly associations. Greasetrap, yes, I think your wife will like the steam once she learns to use it. Having to deal with the tank does make it less convenient, so part of it depends on how she feels about carrying water (esp. if you're not around to help), attending to appliances, etc. Re tending things in the steam oven, the biggest thing is that you learn not to. If you do need to, you take out the pan, and close the oven. Yes, you let out the steam, but it rebuilds pretty quickly, at least in my Gaggenau. There may be other differences in using the Wolf, as well, but generally things don't need to be stirred, rotated and turned over nearly as much with just convection heat and steam. And one lets the steam do the basting. Results are best in the sheet pans that the oven comes with (and similar). Blanching green beans is dead easy, but I do take the time to lay them out neatly. One or two more that don't fit are okay half on top of others, but basically, I keep them in one flat layer. Same thing with a chicken. If I want to do a whole roast, I remove the spine and flatten it. That way only the inside and backs of legs face down. I also like to elevated it on a bed of root vegetables so it's above the sides of the pan. If I didn't want the veg, I'd use a rolled edge sheet pan instead of a sided one. Being above the pan helps the skin be nice and crispy and the hot air gets to the bottom more easily.

I have a Wolf CSO and, if I had to do it over again, I would give Miele a much closer look than I did the first time around. According to the Yale appliance blog, Miele makes 97% of their parts in-house, and it's the least-serviced brand they have. The Wolf CSO, on the other hand, is a re-branded V-Zug (a European brand) oven. If you're thinking of getting the Wolf in the "Professional" trim (as shown in your mockup), be aware that the hinges are not strong enough to support the weight of the bar on the door. Wolf advises that, after use, you leave the door partially open in the "at rest" position to let the oven cool down. If you try this, the door will fall completely open with a fair amount of force. The problem, according to a Wolf repairman, is that the bar adds too much weight to the door. Wolf doesn't consider this to be a defect though, as you can fiddle with the door and find a spot where it will stay partially open. The Miele unit is plumbed, while Wolf has a removable water container. It isn't hard to refill the Wolf container, but my oven often says it needs to be refilled once it gets down below about 1/2 full. The oven won't give you this error message though, unless the oven is running in steam mode. When this happens on my oven, it won't even recognize that I've refilled the water, and I have to shut the oven off completely (once I even had to flip the breaker) to get the oven to recognize that it has water. It's annoying at best, and can create problems if you need to get steam into the oven early in the cooking process (like when you're baking a loaf of bread). Of course I can't replicate this problem in front of a repairperson, so the problem hasn't been fixed. It's interesting that a rep at the local Wolf design center told me that Wolf had studied the CSO market extensively and decided not to make a plumbed model, because 90% of the problems encountered are with the plumbing. Aside from that statement being complete BS, 90% of the problems I have with my Wolf are with the water tray. Wolf tells you to start cooking all of your dishes in a cold oven, as it heats up quickly. I think the real reason they tell you this, is because the oven won't produce steam once the temperature gets over 212 degrees. So if you're an experienced bread baker and want to bake bread in a preheated oven while injecting steam, be aware that you can't do this on a Wolf. I started another post on this subject in the Appliance Forum, and my understanding is that the Miele CSO will inject steam into a preheated oven. This isn't to say that you can't make a decent loaf of bread in the Wolf, but it won't give you the amount of control that an experienced baker typically wants. Another issue is that, if you are cooking something with steam at a temperature over 212 and open the door to check on your dish (like when you're reheating something), most of the steam will come out and the oven won't put new steam in. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as my experience is that too much steam can make a dish too soggy. Always be careful to protect your hands when opening an oven with steam, as you can get burned very easily. Aside from the steam, a big advantage to having a CSO is that it heats up very quickly and is much more convenient than a full-size oven when making a quick meal. In this respect, the lack of a broiler on the Wolf is a definite disadvantage. Wolf has a "Convection Humid" mode for their oven, which I find is nice for cooking dishes like lasagna and macaroni & cheese. Many newer traditional ovens now vent any steam because of their sensitive electronics, so I find it convenient to have this cooking mode available. I don't know whether Miele has this cooking mode as well, but I assume they do. When used as a traditional oven, the Wolf CSO heats up air and blows it into the oven cavity, unlike a traditional convection oven which heats up the oven cavity and then redistributes the air. This seemed a bit weird to me at first, as the oven cavity is completely cool almost immediately after cooking, even though the heating element (wherever it is) is hot and needs time to cool off. When cooking something that sticks up in front of the convection fan (like a roast or a loaf of bread), I generally turn it around half way through, to avoid overcooking one side. Aside from this, the Wolf seems to take a bit longer to cook most dishes than a traditional oven (though this is more than offset by the quicker time to heat up). Wolf has a number of pre-programmed cooking modes under their "Gourmet" and "Recipe" menus. They'll send you a book with recipes for one or two of these menus, but other than that, you're on your own in terms of figuring out what they do and how to use them. For example, there's a pre-programmed Slow Roast mode, which does a very nice job of roasting a beef tenderloin and having it ready to eat (including resting time) exactly when you want it. There are several other types of meat that can be cooked in this way, but what if I want to make a Strip Roast (which isn't one of the choices)? Do I just program it for Top Round and hope it comes out the same? There's all kinds of pre-programmed modes (e.g. soufflés or beef stroganoff), but absolutely no information on what the oven does in these modes. Maybe it's me, but I want to know what the oven is going to do before I just let its computer take over. In many cases, there's a small pool of water in the bottom of the Wolf after using one of the steam modes. Wiping this up with a paper towel is generally enough to keep the bottom clean. The sides and back are a lot more difficult to clean though. Wolf says to run the oven with steam at a certain temperature for a certain length of time, and then everything should wipe off. This hasn't been the case with my oven, which has lots of little brown spots on the back and sides, that I can't seem to get off. The Wolf CSO comes with one solid and one perforated pan that fit into the slots on the side of the oven. A rep at my local design center told me to be sure to buy some "half size" pans as well, so I could steam 2 different dishes at once. The clear impression was that these "half-size" pans take up the whole width of the oven and fit into the racks as well. After spending $250 to buy 2 of the "half-size" perforated pans, I discovered that they're nothing more than small perforated pans that you could buy in any restaurant supply store for $10 or $15 apiece. They aren't the full width of the oven, and certainly don't fit into the side slots. Of course, they won't take the pans back, because I had already opened them at this point. I get the feeling that Wolf spends more money on promoting their brand, while Miele spends more on engineering. Wolf has a number of design centers around the country where smartly dressed people will wax enthusiastic about their products. They also hold cooking demonstrations where chefs will show you how to prepare dishes to impress your guests. Overall, my impression is that Miele gives you a lot more control over the cooking process than Wolf. That's not to say that the Wolf doesn't do its job well, but it often doesn't tell you what it's doing, and you have to come up with own methods if you want to tweak the process. It reminds me a bit of a story I read once about the difference between Boeing and Airbus. Both planes have lots of computerized controls, that do most of the work of flying. The difference is that Boeing always gives ultimate control to the pilot, while Airbus leaves that control with the computer. So in certain situations Airbus pilots need to learn how to trick the computer into doing what they want the plane to do. From what I've seen and read, Wolf is more of an Airbus, and Miele is more of a Boeing.

I want the broil feature and only those two offer it... wolf does not. Since i will be putting the cso with a single convection under it and another single convection under a cooktop next it I don't think there is an option to mix appliance, While Miele's CSO has a broiler element, it's only about as powerful as what you'd expect for an "average" residential oven. I find it works to give dishes a little bit of heat from the top, but it isn't really very useful for char broiling. That's a problem with a lot of ovens. If you want to get a good broiler, you need to buy a higher-end gas oven (those often advertise what they call "IR" broilers), or you need to buy a Bluestar wall oven. That is one of the few electric ovens that is known for having a very good broiler element. Putting a wall oven under a cooktop doesn't generally work all that well. Not only do you have to negotiate the clearance requirements between the wall oven and the cooktop, there also is the problem that wall ovens typically sit closer to the floor. With in-wall installation, that's awesome. But when you are already in a bottom cabinet, that means the door is too close to the floor and it's very awkward to access. As for mixing and matching, I honestly wouldn't worry too much. Nobody is really going to notice after a few weeks. It's a little more noticeable when the units are directly next to each other. But even that doesn't matter much. We have a stack of Miele CSO and SpeedOven in the wall, and a Bluestar range right next to it. I don't think anybody has spotted the different brands yet. We also have a paneled SubZero fridge, but we installed a Miele handle, as it happened to be cheaper and a design that worked better for us.