Wolf told me their steam oven would make great pizzas with a nice, chewy-crispy crust. Of course, I couldn't spend that kind of money to buy a single + steam oven with my double oven refund money, and they didn't seem to want to offer me a deal, so I can't tell you how it does! But I definitely consider Plllog a credible resource, and she has a lot of experience with the size and abilities of the Gagg combi oven. Her experience doesn't make me want to rush out and buy one! At least for breads and pizza. I, too, decided that, in the long run, a double oven would serve a big family better. Now for pizza advice you may or may not want: Anyway, I do have experience with pizza for a big family and for crowds. A lot of my blog's space in the last 3 years has been filled with our adventures in pizza baking (this is the link if you want it)... Not only the challenges of feeding a family of 10 and sports teams of up to 40, but using different recipes, techniques, pans, temperatures, stones, etc, etc to get 'the best' pizza. First of all, I think you might be causing yourself some problems by trying to bake more than one pizza at a time. Those more knowledgeable in cooking science can correct me if I'm wrong, but the 2 pizzas will double the mass and humidity, which I think would affect cooking and browning, which, in turn affect time to cook and texture. You might steam your pizzas in a regular oven, which doesn't have the heat to do multiples. But maybe that makes a chewier texture and maybe that's what your family prefers. One thing I've learned is that my 'perfect pizza' might not match someone else's. My Wolf ovens were the best at pizza baking. I think it recovered temps faster, which helped keep things moving. I also had pretty good results with the Fisher & Paykel, and the Gagg does OK.. Probably #3 for me. Monogram doesn't even get a place. I wish I could offer more about the Bosch, but since it's related to Gagg, I would expect it to do OK, too. (I would expect Elux to do as well as the F&P, from the baking performance reports I've read here, but you were asking about Bosch) My current favorite pizza method uses the basic recipe from the book Artisan Breads in 5 minutes a Day. That means I stir up the dough in a bucket on Friday night (after forming that night's pizzas), let it sit at room temp while I bake that night, then put it in the fridge, and it's ready to use on the following Friday. When Friday evening comes, I preheat the oven, with a "Baking Steel" on the 2nd to the top rack, for an hour or so, at 500 to 550. While the oven and Steel heat, I form and top the pizzas on parchment (trimmed so that the excess doesn't burn at the high temps), so I can slide one out and the next one in, using a peel, quickly and easily. --I tried the Gagg pizza stone Plllog mentioned, but never got the results I wanted. She thinks it's because I use parchment instead of putting the pizzas in direct contact with the stone. The parchment makes things too clean and easy when I need to bake so many pizzas, so I won't give it up. Previous to the Baking Steel, which I highly recommend, I had other stones... One was a Pampered Chef stone that I used until it was in 4 pieces, and after that, a stone meant to hold ceramics baking in a kiln. (Inexpensive from school or art supply places) That worked well, but doesn't fit in the shallower Gagg cavity, and DH hasn't gotten around to trimming it for me.-- With the Gagg, I can choose which elements and fans to use or not use. When I put pizzas in, I choose the mode that offers full bottom heat and partial top heat, and uses no convection fans. In a different oven, I'd choose the standard "Bake" mode, which is similar. I find that this mode allows the bottoms to cook adequately before the tops overbrown. Your mileage may vary in different ovens and different makes of ovens, and you can adjust the mode for more top heat or fans, if necessary, to get the result you'd prefer. This method takes about 8 or 9 minutes per pizza. The Wolf used to get it done in 6 or 7. Hope this helps.

Plllog hit on the key factor above - cost. there's no commercial reason for any tv show to focus on a cooking technique that requires a minimum $2000 (and more likely $3500) appliance. The number of people who can budget for such an item is very small. Combine with the number who actually know what it is, and want to make use of it gives you an even smaller market penetration, to the point of being zero. For example, I'm in a very affordable part of the country, but one with relatively high average income and good penetration of the high end appliance brands. The vast majority of the $2MM homes I see here (which is the very top of the market locally - the most exclusive neighborhoods and estate properties) rarely have a fully integrated fridge, let alone a unique and specialized oven. The folks who can afford specialized appliances often aren't the ones who would even consider using them. They're looking for name recognition and resale value more than unique cooking capabilities. Those of us who participate in these kinds of forums represent the lunatic fringe of the marketplace. To expect a mainstream show that relies on commercial revenue to cater to us is as unrealistic as expecting us to all install a Roper or Amana range in our next remodel. We'd rather stretch the kitchen budget to find a way to install a CSO or coffee center or Blue Star / Miele whatever, but most others won't. Honestly, I rather like that these shows show "the other way" to do these sorts of cooking techniques. It makes it more accessible, and shows methods that I might not try, even if I do have the esoteric equipment to make it easier. And if I'm interested, I can easily research on my own how to do the same thing with a specialized tool rather than the Alton Brown "no one-trick tools" method.

I think the concern is primarily about not using water that comes out of a water softener (in particular, if it is a reverse osmosis system). That's somewhat understandable. Water softeners do somewhat strange things, and they can change the water's pH in unusual ways. This is all something that most appliances aren't prepared for. The same precaution applies to using softened water in coffee machines. I don't think there is any concern about using bottled store-bought water though. And since you don't need to fill in a lot of water per use, bottled water shouldn't be a huge hassle when using a steam oven. Of course, a plumbed oven and a naturally soft domestic water supply is more convenient. But not everybody gets that choice.

M, It is two separate statements. My first statement is taken out of context and is a comment on this. It is talking just about transfer of flavor. "You can cook the fish vegetables and a starch, like couscous or bulgur, all at the same time in the CSO without any flavor transfers, This is because of convection and the catalyzer rather than the steam. ____________ The second statement is this. For someone making this decision, they need to isolate what the steam capability truly adds to the combi oven and how they might use it. I agree that using steam has certain unique capabilities and that is my point. Because a CSO can also function as a regular or convection oven many people attribute things that are functions of standard or conv ovens as benefits of the CSO. I'm saying isolate the benefits of steam to see if a CSO is a worthwhile investment for that person. Someone might say I can bake great cookies in a CSO. You can but there is not an exclusive benefit or use of the steam capabilities for that. "In this particular example, dry air actually has really poor heat conductivity and really poor heat capacity. If it wasn't for natural or forced convection, it would in fact be a really good insulator." Heat transfer is a pretty complex subject. A standard/conv oven has so many variables. A CSO adds steam but might take away something else. Cold air would be an insulator to cold chicken but hot air would still transfer heat. Fan assisted convection is one way to increase the rate of transfer because it moves that slightly cooled hot air away and replaces it with hot air. You also have heat transfer by conduction and radiation. Radiation can be 50% of the heat. How does the radiant heat vary in an oven with stainless walls vs enameled steel? With a hidden bake element? What is the bulk of a CSO vs regular ovens and how much heat does it hold. How does a Pyrex dish increase the rate of heat transfer in the different types of ovens vs aluminum or stainless steel pans? If you think about what happens in cooking, it raises a lot of questions. I have actually read that steam can be cooling. It slows the setting and browning of a crust on a loaf of bread. How can that be if it increases the rate of heat transfer? I guess the question would be if water vapor is condensing on the surface of meat, releasing heat and then evaporating taking away heat, what is the net loss or gain of heat? How does conductive and radiant heat figure in? How does the presence of water figure in besides increasing the rate of heat transfer? What is the level of humidity in a regular oven in different situations? How does it compare to a CSO? The Gaggenau use and care manual gives some insight into this. See the chart above. https://media3.gaggenau.com/Documents/9000880517_J.pdf Unless you have some way to measure humidity in the oven and adjust the amount of steam injected, the percentages are just names of settings for how much steam is released. I think it is more of a convenience than control. Control is some more and a lot. I don't believe there is any feedback mechanism to add control like you have for temperature. 80% setting may really be close to 100% of saturation, so is there a real functional difference between 80 and 100? They say that the 30% setting is the amount of humidity a cake releases while baking with the vent closed, no additional steam is released by the oven. How much more vapor is released while cooking something like a chicken, especially if it has drippings underneath evaporating? O% setting is whatever intrinsic humidity is provided by the food cooking minus what is vented out with the vent open. I don't know if it is actively ventilated. I'm sure these actual percentages vary pretty significantly. How would humidity vary in an electric oven (very small vent) vs a gas oven (big vent)? "With conventional oven, you can't start heating the surface until it has started drying out. That probably explains why everybody raves about juicy crispy roast chicken from a CSO" Juiciness of the chicken is determined by the end temperature of the meat rather than a little superficial dryness. The temperature probe is what is responsible for that. You can submerge a chicken in a pot of water and boil it dry. This is a pretty good article that talks about this. "The higher the internal temp the meat achieves, the more water it squeezes out and the drier it gets. In general, most meats are juiciest and most tender when cooked to medium rare, 130 to 135°F internal temperature." https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/basic-meat-science-cooks Whatever drying you have initially is very superficial and you will need to have it in cooking a chicken one way or another to get crispiness and browning. There are techniques to blow fans on chickens to dry the skin out before cooking so it will be crispy. Check out this technique using a hair dryer. http://mytartare.com/tip-blow-dry-chicken/ When a chicken cooks, the steam or hot air only affects the outside as far as drying. The inside of the chicken is cooked by heat transfer from the outer layer of chicken next to it. Almost every convection oven advertises juicy chicken with a crispy skin as a selling point. Cooking chicken is a balance in heat transfer and drying to get the perfect 165F end temp internally along with browning and crispiness no matter how heat is applied. Sous vide brings the meat up to the perfect temperature by cooking with a very low gradient of heat, and then super intense heat to brown. With a combi oven, the chicken is cooked by steaming but to get browning, you have to get drying. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f3qQh3DHDGA Baked goods are different from meat as far as the way they react to heat and steam. Sort of a side issue I noticed is that foods that have more fat seem to brown even in the presence of steam. Plllog here has talked about how chicken browns, being steamed at the end of roasting. Pie crust creates steam and it browns while baking. I think with the chicken, you have a layer of fat on the outside of the chicken skin from basting or fat being released during cooking. As the skin heats, moisture reaches the boiling point and turns into steam. As it rapidly expands, it goes through the fat but the fat acts as a barrier to it coming back onto the skin. You have drying that way. There the are probably a hundred more effects that are not being considered. Another interesting comparison is a steam assist like Thermador/KA vs moisture assist like Capital vs the CSO.