A few careers ago I worked in the supply chain for appliance manufacturers, with about 90% of that actively working with ovens. The euro manufacturers certainly make a great product, as do the high-end domestics like Wolf, Dacor and DCS. I've forgotten more than I care to remember about the oven world.
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Originally Posted by red-beard
Oh, and it was self cleaning! I've never seen a gas oven that was self cleaning, before. Worked great.
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Any Gas oven with Electronic control could have self-cleaning. IIRC, GE did the first in the 80's.
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The dual heat type I don't quite understand. Why would you want a gas cooktop & an electric oven? What is wrong with gas/gas. If I am going to pay for the gas hookup, I wanted to at least free up some of the fuse panel.
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Some people believe that electric ovens have more uniform heat distribution (fewer hot spots in the cavity) than Gas. Bah. I can assure you there is no electric oven in a three-start kitchen. However, gas ovens do have safety issues (that's why there are flame sensors to make sure they are on and not just spewing gas), are more expensive to manufacture, and need more attention to venting. It's much easier to install an Electric oven so the trades prefer it.
Regarding manufacturers, although there has been significant turmoil in the industry since I left it, the engineers at Whirlpool consistently impressed me with the amount of energy they put into cooking performance. Red-Beard's experience notwithstanding, I will never buy an appliance from GE (or from Sears made by GE). I still bear scars from being a supplier to GE. Great Stock to own, but tough to be in their six-sigma supply chain with the threat of having your business pulled to a cheap competitor ever six months.
If you eat to live, get a glass panel cooktop. If you live to eat, Gas.
If you are going to get a premium brand oven (which I would), then stop reading. If you are going to get an oven simply to cook, you pretty much can buy near the bottom of the price range - typically the controller (which is used to characterize cooking performance) is designed for a whole series of models, with extra features, buttons, etc. just being "turned on" with a different control panel. 95% of people use very little of the extra control features of an oven, in fact there is still a strong market for ovens with a knob to set temperature (as opposed to a keypad), even if that knob is a potentiometer connected to a digital controller.
YMMV