I had oven overkill in my last house. 48” df range which has two ovens and a Gagg CSO. I used the CSO most of the time.

this new house has a Wolf CSO and a Wolf convection oven. Perfect for my needs. The CSO is extremely versatile. You will use it like crazy.

@ILoveRed thanks for your thoughts. I see many people saying they like CSO and that it is their "go to" oven. How do you compare your Wolf and Gaggenau CSOs? It looks like the Wolf is not plumbed, which is a turn-off for me, but otherwise, how do they compare?

Here's some Miele info-

What styles of cooking? How often? How often do you entertain? Realistically only you can answer whether that will be enough.

For some people and perhaps most people that would be more than sufficient and a good combination of capabilities.

In Scotland we had one rather small electric oven and made it work.

OTOH, today we have 6 ovens; a Miele XXL CSO, Miele Masterchef convection, GE Advantium fastbake, a 48" Bluestar RNB (2 ovens) and a Memphis pellet grill (worst and most unreliable item I think I've ever owned). We also have a couple of warming drawers. We'd not really want to part with any and they all get used frequently. They each have specific advantages and disadvantages and sometimes we simply need the quantity for a more complicated meal for 16 people.

More: https://bamasotan.us/the-kitchen/

@opaone -- that's a phenomenal kitchen! I will read your entire description a bit later today...it looks very informative and I want time to digest it all. You are right that only I can decide, but not having had a steam oven, I'm trying to figure out how generally useful I will find it. From everything I've read here and elsewhere, it will become my go-to oven. I don't entertain all that often, but when I do, I like to go all out. But the crowds aren't usually large, so I think I will be OK with 1 additional oven.

@ILoveRed -- thanks. I too am concerned about service. I'm in a major metro area, but Gaggenau sales and hence I assume service is scant. And the people that came to work on my Miele vent hood openly admitted they had never worked on one, so I'm not sure that bodes well for Miele service, either.

I really like the features of the Gaggenau with one exception -- they seem to have fewer "guided cooking" modes than Miele or Wolf, and I think those would help me really start using the appliance a lot. If I'm trying to figure things out on my own or constantly needing to consult recipes, I think I will use it less.

Thank you! It was a long long project. :-)

I'm not familiar w/ Gagg but we are able to do a lot of conventional oven tasks in our Miele CSO.

I had a Miele dw in my last house more than a decade ago. Right out of warranty started having problems. Service well over 100 miles away. Cheaper to replace with another brand. My Gagg cso went bad right at sale of house. Plumbing issue...wouldn’t steam. Local guy didn’t have a clue how to work on it. We gave buyer a price concession on non-working oven which they accepted. uh Boy. Lesson learned. I only buy appliances which I know can be easily, quickly serviced by whoever is sent to my house, lol. Wolf and Bosch are my go to brands.oh and Speed Queen w/d. Two sets, lol.

@opaone -- just read your kitchen post and many of the linked articles (griddle, cookware, etc.) -- phenomenal info! Thanks for sharing all of this. I will be returning to read the ventilation article later.

Having had the Wolf and BS griddles, what are the pros and cons of each? I've read that the Wolf is twice as thick and hence keeps its heat better and more evenly, at the expense of heat-up time. From watching videos, it also appears the Wolf is slightly easier to clean up from because it has the removable cup vs trying to force solids through the hole on the BS and ultimately down onto the trip tray.

That Frigidaire product you mentioned was very intriguing -- I was quite excited! But it seems it's been discontinued.

You also have me reconsidering my plan to do a 12" griddle with 6 burners -- perhaps I should instead do a 24" with 4 burners. Decisions, decisions!

The Wolf griddle is definitely much better than the Bluestar. But the BS burners outweighed that. We debated between the two for a long while and we made the right choice with the Bluestar.

BTW, it's not just the thickness of the steel but the Wolf also has an IR burner which provides more even heat across the surface.

Almost a year in and I don't think that there's any decision that we regret.

@opaone -- now I am thinking about crazy options like doing a BS and Wolf rangetop, or a BS range and a Wolf rangetop lol. And yes, good point on the IR, I meant to mention that.

Still bummed that Frigidaire product seems to be gone. I was all primed to add at least one to my setup. Having lost a LOT of expensive food on multiple occasions, I have a fear of refrigerators and freezers dying, and having one of those Frigidaires would have let me mitigate the risk of either of my column units malfunctioning.

Opaone...just looked at your blog. Your house is so pretty. Do you also have exterior pics? I love shingle style.

@ILoveRed -- to tide you over until opaone can reply, check out https://bamasotan.us/2020/09/the-big-reveal/

We have the oven in our Bluestar gas range, a Miele CSO and a Miele speed oven. I agree that the CSO is the most versatile and most frequently used oven. The fact that it is plumbed is pretty critical too, as it vastly increases the likelihood that we'll use it on a whim. I am not too familiar with the other brands, as they didn't even offer plumbed CSO when we shopped for it; so, they simply weren't on the radar.

I also agree that having ovens with different features is very useful. The Bluestar oven is mostly used for its insanely powerful broiler, the large cavity and the fact that I don't mind if it doesn't look perfectly clean; the black enamel nicely hides minor splatter. The CSO is used for its fast preheat, excellent humidity control, built-in sous-vide function, precise low-temp modes, and because it just generally is a good oven. The speed oven is primarily used as a microwave, but it sometimes is convenient to have a third oven. In a pinch, it can also do double-duty as an improvised warming drawer. If it is in the budget, I would recommend getting a speed oven instead of a regular microwave. The speed function isn't all that important, but having another oven is.

I have cooked meals for up to 100+ people in this kitchen. That's the only time when I ran out of ovens and we used the outdoor gas grill as an overflow oven. Buying GrillGrates™ was the best $140 that I ever spent on my grill. Really upped what I can use it for.

@M -- super helpful, thank you! Interesting idea about the speed oven vs regular microwave. It could be in the budget, but I still think I'll want a full-size 30" oven, and it looks like all of the speed ovens are 24" (although they come in 30" widths for aesthetics, cavity size doesn't change).

I am not quite sure what to tell you here. I find that in practice, the 24" CSO (I don't even have the XXL, just XL) is plenty. Having multiple smaller ovens is absolutely more useful than fewer large ones.

But then, I am not the best person to ask, as I do in fact have access to a really large oven. It doesn't get much bigger than the Bluestar range. It holds a full commercial baking sheet, or two residential half-sheets next to each other.

Realistically, it is very rare that I need this capacity, and it comes at the cost of longer preheat times. But there are rare occasions when I have used the full capacity. So, I can't with a straight face tell you that you'll never need it.

The realization that multiple small ovens are so useful is exactly why I am excited about LaCanche. It wasn't really a good fit for our particular needs, but when my brother asked for advice for is kitchen, I strongly pushed him towards LaCanche. And he is very happy with his choice. Looks gorgeous too.

@M -- you're right in that I'm trying to plan for an edge case of needing a large oven for something...a once every 5 or even 10 year thing that pops up, like a huge turkey. For routine use I agree that a greater number of smaller ovens is more useful. It sounds like all of the 24" options will fit a 10lb rib roast, and that's the biggest thing that I need to accommodate on any regular basis. Thanks again for all of your thoughts -- I appreciate the perspectives of people who have used these appliances.

The LaCanche looks really cool, but I'm a bit turned off by the non-standard widths.

The LaCanche looks really cool, but I'm a bit turned off by the non-standard widths.

In a way, that's actually one of their biggest strength. In general, I feel the US probably has a bit of a leg up over Europe with regards to highly-functional kitchens. The prosumer trend started here and you can still tell that it is easier to build a highly-functional kitchen from American components. I have just gone through helping my brother design a new kitchen in Europe. Making it functional is of course possible; but it's more of an uphill battle than in the US, where vendors are more familiar with consumers asking for prosumer features.

Having said that, there are a few things that IMHO the US market got wrong. And that's the "standard" size of their ranges. 30" is great. No doubt about that. 36" is not bad either and a lot of people really enjoy it. But any of the other sizes (48", 60", and 72") have greatly diminishing returns. The oven configurations feel awkward at that point, the larger stove top becomes somewhat less useful unless you start adding lots of special-purpose components, and the venting requirements are insanely complex. Maybe, 12" increments wasn't the best idea.

On the other hand, Europe has 60cm (24"), 70cm (27"), 75cm (30"), 100cm (40") and 110cm (43") as some of their common dimensions; and then they can go much bigger as well, but that doesn't seem very popular.

Personally, I find 100cm (40") or 110cm (43") looks really like the sweet spot for a larger range. It's big enough to allow nicer additional features and multiple ovens. But it isn't completely unwieldy just yet.

@M -- great points, esp about weird oven sizes. I should have been more clear that my concern about the non-standard sizes is that it limits future options. When that range needs to be replaced, there will be fewer options than if it used a standard US size.

As long as you stick to something like 100cm and maybe even 110cm, I am not overly worried that you wouldn't be able to import from outside-of-US in the future, even in the unlikely even that the official LaCanche distributor shut down.

Also, it's not extremely difficult to design filler strips to adjust between sizes that are relatively close to each other. Heck, if you really wanted to, you could probably install a 43" LaCanche in a custom-built cabinet that was already designed so that it could be modified for an 48" opening, should that ever be necessary. And by the same token, a 36" could be made to fit into a 40" opening.

But those are all very personal choices. Where I wouldn't be scared of a 43" range, as I know I'll live in this house for the long run, others very legitimately can be concerned about resale of their house. And in that case, anything non-standard is a potential issue.

@ILoveRed,

Posted: https://bamasotan.us/2021/05/exterior-photos/

And for fun: https://bamasotan.us/2019/04/virtually-complete/

The 3D renders by @User were super helpful for my wife with understanding the landscaping plan. The garden and garden shed in the 3D's will still go in but probably not until next year as I'm swamped this year.