I’m going to be posting soon about my overall dissatisfaction
with Wolf (I bought a CSO, single M series wall oven, and 36” rangetop with
grill).
In the meantime, I would make the following points about the Wolf steam
oven.
The Wolf CSO comes with full-size solid and
perforated pans that slide right into the rack holders, and the woman at Clarke
Living (our local Wolf/SZ demo center) suggested that we buy “half-size” ones
as well for those times when we want to cook 2 items at the same time. I don’t remember the exact language she used,
but the clear implication was that these “half-size” pans were designed to fit
in the rack holders as well, but took up only half the depth of the oven. So we ordered 2 of these perforated pans at
$125/each, only to discover that they’re not half size at all (closer to 1/3
size) and they don’t fit into the rack holders.
There’s nothing wrong with the pans themselves, but there’s no
difference between these pans and small steam tray pans that you can buy at
any restaurant supply warehouse for $10-15/each. Of course, Wolf won’t take them back, saying
that items aren’t returnable once opened.
So I feel that Wolf dinged me for an extra $250 on top of my $14K
purchase.
If buying the M series Pro Style CSO, be aware
that the door hinges are not strong enough to support the weight of the door. The manual recommends leaving the door
cracked open in the “At Rest” position when you’re done cooking to let the
steam vent and the oven to cool off. The
problem is that, when you do this, the door will slam open with a good deal of
force. According to Wolf, this is due to
the weight of the pro-style door handle, but they don’t consider it to be a design
defect, because you can find a spot where the door will stay open if you play
with it a bit. The best you can do at
this point is complain to Wolf, and they’ll put your name on a list in case
they ever redesign the hinges.
We’ve had intermittent problems when the water
tray has run dry, but the oven doesn’t recognize that we’ve refilled it. This has happened twice, but the problem has
gone away in a day or two, both times before a tech could make it out to our
house.
While we haven’t made full use of the CSO’s
capabilities yet, I would say that it cooks well and heats up much more quickly
than a normal oven. In particular, it does
a nicer job reheating than a microwave, but it doesn’t live up to the hype of
the people in the Wolf showroom. For
example, the people at Clarke raved about how it can make a stale or frozen
croissant taste freshly baked. When I tried
this with a frozen croissant, it came out a soggy mess. While the steam can be a nice feature for
reheating, I think you can overdo it. I
often turn the steam off after a few minutes.
A couple of general points about CSO’s as well:
When cooking with steam, be careful to let the
steam vent when opening the oven. I’ve
almost burned myself a couple of times when opening the oven to check on
something.
If stacking the CSO over a regular oven, give
some thought as to the height you want it mounted, particularly if it’s going
to be your principal oven. Our
contractor, mounted the CSO so that the top is at the same level as the top of
a traditional double oven. In a way,
this worked well because it gave us an oversized drawer underneath the 2 ovens
(we have an M Series mounted underneath).
The problem though is that if you’re slightly vertically challenged,
then neither oven will be at optimal height.
My wife uses the M Series oven most of the time, because the CSO is a
bit too high for her.
Q
Cabinet check
Q