Gas range/top and/or electric oven. Help me decide and check my design
Hello
I am doing a complete kitchen gut/redo. I have the design/layout mostly done but can't seem to decide on whether I should go with a gas rangetop with double electric oven or a gas range plus a single electric oven or single electric oven with microwave. I definitely want a gas range or rangetop. Its the oven part that I'm having trouble with. I currently have it laid out with 36" gas rangetop as I figured if I go separate with rangetop and oven then I might as well go with 36" and double electric oven but after doing lots more reading, I'm leaning towards a bluestar range/rangetop and holy cow, they are expensive. So that got me thinking that maybe I should do a 30" Bluestar or similar range and maybe a single electric oven or electric oven with microwave. Right now my microwave is on a shelf next to fridge and it makes that corner kind of odd but the bump out of the microwave but it was a compromise as I didn't really want to put the microwave in a base cabinet.
I don't do a crazy amount of cooking but do have a family of 5 and sometimes entertain (though small). I do like to bake homemade sourdough bread and pizza. Would like to have warmer drawer type of function and figure double oven could pull double duty for baking and keeping warm. Will say that I have never cooked with gas but always wanted to and have never used a high quality cooking anything. My current house is our forever house and will be passed on to the kids someday. So we do want to invest in quality and hubby is a fix anything except electronic/computer kind of guy. I will attach some design pics. Would greatly appreciate any ideas/input on my cooking situation and or anything else you might notice that could be improved before I order cabinets.
Thank you so very much. I feel like my head is going to explode with thinking about all of this.
Comments (30)
sheloveslayouts
last yearRelated Discussions
Please help me decide on 27' convection ovens and 30' gas cooktop
Comments (4)Funny I had some of the same constraints. I have a 30" Wolf cooktop and like it very much. I am now used to it, but 2 years ago when I did my kitchen, I went from a 30" range to the 30" cooktop, it did at the time feel a bit compacted to me because the range had the controls in the front vs. the top as on the cooktop. I am now used to it and while your "big" my not be my big, I don't have any problems using wide pans simultaneously on my cooktop. To make risotto for instance, I use two wide (9 -10") pans on two burners back to front and don't have any problems with the space. 10" is my widest pan however. Surface wise it hasn't felt tight to me. However, there are 2 cooks in the family and it felt a bit close to me in the beginning going from the 30" range to the 30" cooktop but now it is not an issue. I do love the cooktop, though. Performance-wise it is very good. If the latter consideration is relevant to you, however, you may also want to take a look at the Viking designer series - the cooking surface spans the 30" width, controls in front. Do study its outputs though - for me, the high at 14KBTU may have been fine although I preferred the 15KBTU, but 2 years ago, the low was 1.2KBTU and that was too high for the things I do want to be able to make some times. At 675-700btu simmer settings for the viking now, that is a LOT better. The Wolf has 300 or 400btu lows and I find that I use them quite a bit so I would not have been happy with 1100btu for a low. I have a Bosch oven and like it very much indeed. I have a 30" 700 series but since Bosch came out with new models this year, I don't claim to know anything about them. The 700series is a relatively basic oven even though it was their top offering 2 years ago - bake, convection bake, convect. roast, broil, convect. broil and warm, thaw, dehydrate or some modes like that. It is self-cleaning although I've only ever used it once. Goes down to 100degrees in "warm", 120degrees in "dehydrate", 170degs in the cooking modes. The direction of the heat source distinguishes the modes. It does an excellent job with temperature control (+/- 7 or 9degrees per my experience except for when you open the door in which case the temp can drop sizeably depending on mode; Miele Wolf and Gaggenau are even more precise & hold temperatures to within 5-7degrees), very even whether in bake, broil or roast; I liked its size as it was a smaller oven. I LOVE its interface. I noticed Consumer Reports doesn't like it either but haven't been able to figure the reviews out. I will say that you do have to experiment a bit to get used to how to cook in it - either it is the convection or the Bosch itself but there are things I have had to consciously start to do to ensure good performance; I did have some corkers in the beginning before I cottoned on to that. Placing the rack too close to the front of the oven instead of in the center or towards the back will interrupt its' air circulation (in convection) and the net result can be a asymmetric cooking. Likewise sorting out how to load the racks for multi-rack cooking so that they are evenly spaced out else same story. That sort of stuff. Anyhow, I like my Bosch oven very much but claim no knowledge of even any of their new models. I absolutely love the cooktop, but I think that the oven maybe what I play with even more than the cooktop....See MoreIs a gas oven/range better for resale value than electric?
Comments (45)I have had gas and electric ranges over the years, but for the last 30+ I have cooked on electric until I moved and our new condo had a gas range. Everyone was all agog over it and told me I would LOVE the gas range that it was so much better than electric. For the last 20 years before our move, I cooked on smooth top electric ranges and loved them! But everyone kept telling me gas was better. Turns out, I DO NOT love the gas range. It doesn't boil water as fast as my electric one did and seems to take forever to preheat the oven. And I've had a hard time adjusting to the fact that if I don't use hot pads to remove my pans off the stove top, I'll burn my hands. And don't leave your stirring spoon in the pot for more than a second if you don't want to burn off a finger or two. My cookies don't rise -and they're either not done enough or too done, can't get it just right like before. AND the worst part is cleaning it! That's the main reason I switched to a smooth top all those years ago - they take a little getting used to the different cleaning method, but when you learn the tricks, they're a breeze compared to the old coil or this gas behemoth! It takes me a good hour to clean around all the burners and try to be careful not to get cleaner or food down those little slots around the sides. And even using a degreaser detergent, it still looks greasy after going over it several times. Give me my smooth top back! . . . where I can just scrap off the burnt on food with a razor blade - or if there isn't anything burnt on, I can just wipe on a little cleaner and polish it off with a paper towel. When wiping down the countertops with a little dish soap, I can include the stovetop and keep it sparkling clean on a daily basis. I have severe arthritis in my hands and moving those heavy grates off the top and then the cleaning around all the little places is just a little too much for me (not to mention getting gunk off the grates). That is why, after 2 1/2 years of trying to get used to it, I have decided to replace my gas range with a brand new smooth top electric range. People tell me I must be CRAZY because I'm the only person they know who prefers electric over gas. The only thing I will miss is turning off the heat immediately when something boils over. So I will have to get used to moving the pan off again. But it's worth it to me to clean up a boil over on the smooth top vs. the gas burner-cover-slots thing. AND I'll have my wonderful convection oven back and maybe my cookies too!...See MoreHelp me choose new range - gas vs induction
Comments (26)The comments about ten-power settings got me musing on the subject and about Amy's initial question about logarithmic power controls. Here's where that lead me. Nobody really has logarithmic power controls, but there can be power settings spaced to sort of approximate a logarithmic curve -- a number of settings at the low end with only a couple of additional points needed to define the steep side of the curve for really high heat. In theory, that can be done with a ten-step power curve and some folks do find 10 power settings fine for what and how they cook. Others do not. Is anybody else here old enough to remember the GE stoves and cooktops from 50's and 60's with ten mechanical pushbuttons for heat settings? Those pushbuttons were literally "digital" controls, meaning that you punched them with one of your digits. GE sold a lot of them for a couple of decades, so some people found them adequate. Some did not. For the current digital electronic ten-step controls, others here besides loonlakecamp have reported satisfaction with a ten step set-up. Others, like me, would find them inconvenient for my cooking with, say, my pressure cookers. With only ten heat level steps, I would have to be constantly switching settings to maintain the correct pressure. Power setting "1" might be too low, setting "2" might be too high. Switch to 1 for a while until the pressure drops a little too low, switch to 2 for a while until it gets a little too high, then back to 1, etc., etc. With in-between settings, I avoid that annoyance. You don't use pressure cookers? Then maybe having in-between steps won't matter to you. This is just one example of how cooking styles can differ and how more settings can matter to one cook and not to another. Much fuss is sometimes made about the supposedly infinite adjustablity of gas burners. As a practical matter, though, we mostly try to get the burner to the same relatively few settings. Searing is pretty much searing, isn't it? If you deep fat fry, how often would you care if if the oil were at 352° instead of 350°? But maybe somebody is working with sugar syrups where, say, it might matter if a syrup is at 325° and not 360° and then maybe it matters if the induction burner only has ten settings. That said, the subject of induction power settings and controls can be more complicated than just the number of settings. The need for finding "in-between" steps for induction cooking can reflect two different aspects of ways that manufacturers design induction burner controls. One consideration is the power cycling that all induction burners use for settings of less than full power. A technical term for this is "pulse width modulation. or "PWM." It is the same kind of thing a microwave does for low heat levels---momentary pulses of power that average out at a particular heat level. With most PICs as well as some brands of induction cooktops and ranges, the PWM is pretty crude. I've seen this somewhere described as firing up the burner for a second or two of omigosh hot and then switching totally off for three or four seconds. While these pulses average out at a certain heat level the timing can be problematic for, say, the srambled eggs that Amy mentioned at the outset. Combine that kind of "low frequency" PWM with the crude power controls found on many PICs, and you could have a reason that Amy would find herself wanting steps in-between power level "1" and "2" for scambling eggs. Some full size induction ranges and cooktops work this way. I noticed a lot of pulsing at the low heat settings on the Maytag induction range I saw demoed several years ago when I was stove shopping. From past threads on PWM, I gather than Whirlpool's induction ranges and cooktops (which include Maytag and Kitchenaid brands) have used crude PWM. For searching out past threads here on this subject try a search strings like "induction + pulsing + gardenweb" and "induction + cycling + gardenweb." A few of the expensive PICs (Cooktek, Garland, Vollrath) and many full size ranges and cooktops use much higher frequency PWM. Instead switching on and off for a second or more at time, the power switches on and off many times per second. The higher frequency of switching yields much finer power control that more closely approximates a steady heat level. The other design aspect that can lead to wanting "in-between" settings is in how the engineers program the electronic controllers to space the power settings on the appliance you are using --- that's the kind of logarithmic curve I thnk Amy may been thinking about when she posed her question in the original post. . For manufacturers, the least costly controls use simple linear spacing. Setting "1" would use the PWM to average 10% power, setting "2" would be 20%, etc. Even with a high quality PWM, though, 9 or 10 linear settings may be too crude, A thing most induction users discover pretty quickly is that they do most of their cooking in the low to medium range settings. The highest setting can be used for boiling. One or two medium high settings takes care of high heat applications like searing. There seem to be three strategies for induction manufacturers to address the crudeness. One is to add half-steps between the numbered power settings. The other is to program the stove's controllers to put more steps in the low to medium range and fewer in the high ranges. The third strategey combines the first two. Without using the particular induction stove or cooktop, it can be hard to find out whether the particular unit was designed to use one or the other or some combination of them. In my own somewhat limited experience, it seems that the GE induction appliances and Electrolux's Frigidaire/Kenmore ranges seemed to use a modified-half step approach with some concentration of steps but also using half steps for finer control. The Electrolux-branded models use a slightly different approach with quarter-steps at the lower power ends and fewer steps at the high end. Miele cooktops seem to use a similar kind of mix with the option of switching on more steps. I'm not sure how BSH (which includes Bosch) handles this except that their induction appliances manuals show that half-steps are available. The Samsung freeestanding induction ranges seemed to follow the GE model (19 half steps). The reports about Samsung's ten-step "Chef Collection" model seem to conflict, some seeming to say that stepping is linear, some hinting that the settings may be skewed to the lower end. There is a yet another strategy which is the near infinite stepping of of potentiometer-like controls. These control systems seem to be very expensive so, AFAIK, they are used only for the commercial Garland/Manitowiac PICS and maybe the new Miele induction range have this. I say "maybe" for the Miele because there is nothing about it in the product literature and the display shows only whole-number settings, but a couple of posters here -- livinginseattle is the name I recall -- have reported finding that the knobs can be turned to provide fine gradations of "in-between" settings. Some folks would find that ideal. Then the question becomes: how much are you willing to spend for the "ideal" (and are there other design compromises that have to accept in order to get that ideal function for the burners?)...See MoreHelp me decide gas range/steam oven VS range top/wall ovens
Comments (3)I recommend that you post your question on the appliance forum. You will get more responses. I would get the Wolf gas range, convection wall oven with the steam oven above it. This way you have the gas range oven for a large turkey, the convection and steam oven for other items, I have a Wolf range and I love it!!!!...See More
darbuka
last yearlast modified: last yearJust want to add…instead of doors under the rangetop, I suggest putting in two 36” drawers for pots and pans. Just so convenient!
Janina Piotroski
last yearJanina Piotroski
last yearsheloveslayouts , the peninsula is actually currently a wall to the dinning room which we are opening up to create a breakfast bar behind which is the dinning room. Here is a very crude attempt I initially made to sketch it out before the kitchen designer did the real thing. LOL
But it at least gives you an idea of the larger picture. we cannot change the windows so we have to work with what we got.
darbuka
last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearOtter Play
last yearJanina Piotroski
last yearmcarroll16
last year
thinkdesignlive
last yearOtter Play
last yearJanina Piotroski
last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearThe layout in your original post has the look of a salesperson's design who is trying to sell you as many cabinets as possible. It sacrifices both your picture window and your dining room without any real benefit to the function of the kitchen proper.
I'd consider an island. It preserves your window, allows more work space between cooktop and sink, keeps counter seating out of the dining room, and allows better circulation for people to move about when you have gatherings.
Personally, I prefer to have ovens near the exhaust hood so I drew a range into the layout below. I also like to clean as I go and will go to great lengths to keep the dishwasher out of the primary prep space, but assumed you don't mind and I left it on the cooktop side.
Food for thought...
sofikbr
last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearAnd if you can add a cased opening from the entry, your layout would be improved further by getting the dishwasher out of the prep space, and freeing up room to move the oven stack to the left of the cooktop. I drew a pantry next to the fridge.
Janina Piotroski
last yearlast modified: last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearlast modified: last yearJanina Piotroski
last year- PRO
Patricia Colwell Consulting
last year sheloveslayouts
last yearlast modified: last year
T Go TX
last yearlast modified: last year
PROSabrina Alfin Interiors
last yearIf I were building a new kitchen from scratch, I'd be looking at induction ranges or cooktops. I've become a total convert. They work incredibly well and are super energy efficient. We put an induction cooktop with a wall over below in this kitchen. Client loves it!
Bernal Heights Sustainable Kitchen · More Infomcarroll16
last yearJanina Piotroski
last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearJanina Piotroski
last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearJanina Piotroski
last yearsheloveslayouts
last yearlast modified: last yearTo seat 3 at the island I'd probably do 48" of base cabinets on the sink side, wrapped in 15" overhang on the picture window and dining room sides.
Note:
seating at counter height is recommended to have at least 15" deep and 24" wide of overhang per person.
The aisle guidelines are:
at least 36" between counter edge and wall to "edge past" a seated diner (on the left side of the island)
at least 44" to walk behind someone seated at the counter; if counter seating and table seating are back-to-back 60" between counter edge and table edge is a good minimum.
at least 42-48" on the working sides of an island.
darbuka