Everything you have heard is correct. Gas vs electric is usually due to costs, both in energy usage and infrastructure.

Do you cook, what are your concerns based on your experiences. Are you a baker, roaster, pizza maker?

What are you using now?

How do you use your oven?

I ask this because whatever you are using you might notice going from one fuel to the other.

How important is the broiler.

are you fixed on these choices?

I cook mainly on the cooktop but I do love to bake. Mostly bake cookies, breads, cakes and casseroles. The occasional roast but not often. I have mainly used an old electric oven with no convection. I live at 5280ft (Denver) so have learned to adapt to altitude baking. We are remodeling the kitchen and while I would love a top of the line wall oven-cooktop, size and cost prohibit that currently. We are planning a range with gas stove for sure, just trying to decide do I want to splurge for the duel fuel or stick with all gas. I am OK with a learning curve and can adapt, I'd rather pick the fuel that will give me better results.

Wekick the broiler is of medium importance I guess. I haven't used it other than to brown and finish off dishes..

There are a few differences in gas and electric ovens. You will find that chefs and manufacturers would say gas is “moist” heat because water is a byproduct of combustion and so electric must be dry. The problem is they are not looking at the whole oven and the process of cooking.

What are sources of moisture and what happens to it? There is moisture released with the combustion of gas. Food also produces quite a bit of moisture in the cooking process. I read just a couple of weeks ago on the Miele website that a cake baking provides the equivalent of the 30 % steam setting on their steam oven. Imagine how much moisture is produced with some other foods. Gas ovens have a much bigger vent to vent the products of combustion and moisture from food. You have a lot more movement of air through a gas oven while an electric oven has a much smaller vent, holding on to the moisture produced by the food.

Reading cooking and baking forums you hear these comments over and over.

Gas ovens put more heat and moisture into the kitchen.

Gas ovens are great for roasting and browning. If you read about the Maillard reaction, you will see that you must have drying to allow the temperature of the surface to rise and browning chemical reactions to take place.

Some bread bakers want to add steam at the beginning of baking to promote starch gelatinization for a specific type of crust. They report it is much more difficult to keep added steam in a gas oven.

Baking is a complex interaction of variables so it is difficult to make hard and fast rules because you only have to change one or two of the variables and get a different result. Some bakers say that cakes don’t rise as well if they had an electric oven and go to gas. Sometimes they say gas produces a dry looking cake. This again has to do with starch gelatinization being prolonged in an electric oven giving a little longer rise. This doesn’t mean you can’t bake in gas. I think some recipes work well in gas and over the years, you keep recipes that work and discard those that don’t. Cake mixes are formulated to work in different conditions so work with both. Things with more sugar may also show more difference.

Eveness in baking is tricky. That’s what everybody wants. Convection is marketed as the answer to even heat but it can make air currents that make hot spots. The fan is drying to the surface of what you are baking or roasting so that part browns quicker if it gets exposed to an air current. Some companies try to fix that by having two fans, baffles or a reversing fan. Some ovens have a variable speed fan. The fan does change the direction of heat so that it comes from more directions instead of the bottom. Many recipes for cakes and pies were developed with the heat coming from the bottom. There are very expensive electric ovens that don’t have it right and my DILs Bosch gas oven is pretty good. My Electrolux oven is pretty even but has other problems.

Aside from the the nature of the heat, electric ovens can have more control. They may have a third element (true or European convection) and direct heat from the top or bottom, more from the top for roasting. A few gas ovens may have these features now. They can have very tight control of temperature, maybe +/- 2F but I’m not sure how much that matters. More important to me is the range of temperature. My current oven has 80-450F and the fan can blow with the heat off or up to 450F. Some ovens only go as low as 225F. Both of my ovens have slow or fast fan speed.

I know bakers that use gas and electric. Some commercial ovens have steam injectors and ventilators to control humidity.

Gas broilers come come in two forms, the first is a conventional one that doesn’t get that hot. There are also gas infrared broilers that heat evenly and get hot but might be smaller.

I'd like to jump in on this thread as I am making the same decision right now. I have decided to go with a Wolf stovetop....but am trying to decide between double kitchenaid wall ovens....or as it just occured to me recently, making the Wolf an all gas range, and then getting a single KA wall oven (electric).

I was pretty much set to go down the path of a wolf rangetop and the double KAs but it just occurred to me that for the last 8 years (when I have really gotten into cooking more and more) I have always had gas ranges (despite coincidentally having only used electric all my life prior). Wondering how much of a difference I will see between the electric and gas.

Currently we use our oven for baking cookies, sometime braising meats, and roasting (lots of vegetables but some meats as well, especially for the holidays). The idea of having that wolf IR broiler in the range and what is supposedly a better oven (gas) for roasting meats makes me nervous that if we go with the 2 electric wall ovens, I will realize I have been spoiled by 8 years of gas.....but the wife really doesnt like the idea of having a wall oven over here and then an under-stove oven over there (aesthetically or from a kitchen flow/function sense)... Oh, and double KA wall ovens with a wolf rangetop is considerably cheaper than a wolf range with a single wall oven so there's that too.

If oven cleaning matters to you, read the threads on the AquaLift cleaning system in the KitchenAid (and all Whirlpool made ovens). Many people hate the system as it apparently does a very poor job of cleaning. A class action lawsuit has been filed over the AquaLift system.

robertgoulet, you can get gas wall ovens.

If that would not work, a convection fan in an electric oven as well as a roasting mode with more heat from the top can add better browning. You have to read the manual to see exactly how it works but it is interesting that at least on some models, KA uses the convection fan even in the standard bake mode. It might be that the standard bake or convection bake adds enough air movement that it works better than the conv roasting mode. In both of my ovens, not KA, the conv bake does a better job with vegetables because the fan speed is slower. The convection roast works ok for meat. If it starts getting too brown, you can turn the fan off. Off in the KA though is not really off but down but a gas oven has more more flow of air through the oven and you can’t change that either So maybe not that different from what you have.

I have cooked with gas and electric all my life but attributed differences to just being a different ovens. After a very bad experience with one brand of ovens, I started learning more about how ovens work and noticing the differences. I have two electric ovens now but cook in my DILs and sisters ovens which are gas and I do think there is a difference. My wall oven is crossing over to the dark side with its intermittent error codes so I am getting something in mind to replace it if I need to.