The Culinarian is an all gas oven and there are other posts about why you would not want the connoisseurian, the DF.

How do you use your oven? If you could use all gas, you could get a BlueStar RNB.

One-hundred thirty-two people seem to like this Hallman HGR4802DFST 48 Inch Dual Fuel Freestanding Range at $4400.

@wekick thanks for that info on the capital lines. Didn’t realize that about the culinarian and precision; I’d prefer dual fuel. Will research the connoiseurian. Do you recall why it’s a bad bet?

I do lots of all types of cooking; not sure how to answer that?

Never heard of hallman. Will look into that.

Anyone have updated info on the GE cafe and monogram lines?

From reading here on Houzz, most people seem happy with their Hallman. At least one person claims that Hallman is a rebranded Ilve which sells at a discount because of the less well-known brand name. That would explain, why most people have good experiences; Ilve is supposedly one of the nicer'ish Italian brands.

All the negative reviews seem to focus on lack of service. If anything goes wrong, Hallman is apparently really difficult to deal with. Of course, that's hard to evaluate as you are more likely to read negative rather than positive reviews.

Dual fuel is always a challenge, it seems. Most American brands seem to use blue enamel in their electric ovens. Dunno why. And that particular type of enamel is prone to chipping after a few years. I am not sure I want to find small bits of glass all over my food.

On the other hand, gas ovens seem mostly immune to this issue. And German brands for some reason also don't appear to suffer from this problem. It's all a little anecdotal. But that's the general sense of what I have been getting from reading Houzz for a couple of years.

Good to know. Will keep that in mind!

I bought a GE Cafe. It looks beautiful but I haven’t used it yet! Fingers crossed

Such great information thank you! Yes I bake, but also use it for roasting etc. honestly what you’re saying about the temperatures in the oven sounds like what my thermador annoyingly does now.

All gas makes me nervous for some reason... I’ve never had a gas oven.

The bluestar rnb is intriguing. Can someone explain the difference between gas and electric ovens?

While some say they can’t tell the difference, these are some of the comments often repeated on cooking/baking forums about gas ovens.

-More heat/moisture into your kitchen

-increased browning so great for roasting

-much more difficult to keep added steam in the oven

-some bakers note when coming from electric ovens to gas, cakes don’t rise quite as much

Most manufacturers and some chef’s say “gas heat is moist” because gas produces water as a byproduct of combustion. They are not considering the oven and food cooking in it as a whole. Gas ovens have much bigger vents though so the moisture and products of combustion are vented out. Food, cooking produces a lot of humidity and is held in an electric oven. This promotes starch gelatinization which gives a little longer rise to baked goods.

Electric ovens tend to have more controls over direction of heat(roasting modes, baking modes), fans, and often have 1-2 elements in back( Euro or true convection). The epitome of this control is the combi oven. The Monogram has a new feature that allows airflow from the convection fan from the top.

Gas ovens are simpler with usually just off and in convection fan. Less to break though.

The prostyle gas ovens have infrared broilers which are very hot and even but tend to be small, so take a peek and check the size. I use a lot of half sheets so need a wide broiler like you find in an electric oven.

Some gas ovens, even the 30” will hold a full baking sheet or two 1/2 sheets side by side. BS is the only electric oven(wall) that holds a full sheet and it is tight.

I bake a fair amount and I prefer electric because I can get the browning effect by using the convection fan as needed. If I am baking a cake, I start with standard bake and after the cake rises, I open the oven briefly to let humidity out and turn the fan on. In my cake I have low and high speed fans.

One thing that has changed in ovens over the last several years is that they have hidden bake elements. It seems like it cuts down on the radiant heat from the bottom and I have one recipe(upside down caramel apple pie) that doesn’t work because the bottom doesn’t cook enough. It is also very hard on the steel/enamel on the bottom of the oven. I think the high heat is the cause of some of the problems with the enamel.

edit-That’s not to say you can’t bake in gas because you can and some recipes work fine in both but some might not. My sister and I bake the same oatmeal cookie, same ingredients and pans but hers come out thin and crispy and mine are thicker and chewier. She has gas and I have electric.

We had a 30" Bluestar RNB for almost nine years prior to remodeling our kitchen. I use the oven quite a bit, and I only have good things to say about my Bluestar oven. It is a very reliable and predictable oven. (I guess, predictability is the common theme for anything you can do with the Bluestar range!) The only thing that I had to pay attention to was proper pre-heating. It takes a minimum of 20min to do so. That's the cost of having such a huge oven cavity. But the upside is, if I want to bake six or more 3 lbs loaves of bread all at the same time, I can do that.

Yes, there are differences between electric and gas. But I find these differences are pretty manageable. After our remodel, we now have two more smaller wall ovens; one 24"-wide Miele combination steam oven, and one (same size) speed oven.

I find I use the smaller ovens more frequently, as I like that they preheat so quickly. But I don't see a huge difference in how they bake. With a little bit of forethought, I can easily adjust my recipes between both ovens. And yes, it helps if you understand how different ovens work; so, make sure you read what @wekick wrote. That's very insightful.

What I do like about my combination steam oven though is the fine control of moisture. It helps for a ton of different recipes in ways that neither a gas oven nor a traditional electric oven can. If you have the space and the budget (!), I strongly recommend adding this appliance. It's a game changer. It also does great double-duty as a sous-vide cooker.

I find, after the remodel, I only use the Bluestar for three things:

1. if I need the really big cavity; and honestly that happens surprisingly rarely. In practice, the Miele CSO looks small, but is surprisingly capacious,
2. if I do something that splatters a lot. The Bluestar is a lot more forgiving than my shiny and more complicated CSO,
3. if I want to broil. That actually happens a few times a week. The Bluestar broiler must be the closest thing you can get to a commercial salamander in a residential kitchen. It is such a joy to use. But you often need to keep the oven door open to carefully monitor it. It broils so quickly. The Miele CSO is ridiculously underpowered by comparison (and I think, that's true for most electric ovens of other brands). And the broiler in the speed oven is just a pathetic joke, if you know what a good broiler can do.

So, if you want my advice, get the Bluestar RNB. It's a no-frills oven. But once you figure it out, you'll probably like it a lot. Then, if at all possible, complement with a Miele CSO. You'll use the latter multiple times a day. It's so versatile.

Thanks @m and @wekick! Resurrecting this thread because we are finally at a place to go forward with this after some delay. I’m now leaning towards all gas; the fact that there is less that can be broken is very appealing! I was set on either the Bluestar RNB or the Capital Culinarian, but have been reading through the reviews here and it seems that with both there are some QC issues. Uneven heat in the CC, weird parts missing in the BS...

Also, M, your point about the long time to preheat is a good one. However, with a 48” space I was thinking of getting the dual ovens - a small next to a large more standard size. Is this what you had or did you have just one huge one? I wonder if the long preheat is still an issue with a slightly smaller oven.

Sorry - just seeing again your first line that it was 30”! Nevermind on my question. :)