deeageaux- "the rest is not really at the front of the luxury class" Luxury class? What does that have to do with cooking/baking? If perceived "luxury" is important, many will get a Viking(name recognition) or a La Cornue(exotic, expensive and beautiful) or hire a cook. On this forum, posters often compare Wolf, Bluestar and now the Culinarian. Many are derisive of Wolf, even calling it a play stove. They seem to be zeroed in on one aspect of cooking, a higher BTU burner. All are great ranges but have strengths and weaknesses. If you know how to cook, you probably would be happy with any of them but there might be some features that would mean more to you than others. I have had a Wolf DF for about three years and love it. It replaced a Dacor DF that I had about 7 mos and never worked right. I'm sure some other ranges are great too but just don't get the "press" on this forum. Very few people have cooked extensively on more than one of these three ranges to compare directly. It is much more complex than one issue for most people. If having the highest heat were the only issue, save yourself some money and buy a Wok burner @ 75-125K. You would really have some heat then! I have also heard of people hot rodding the Wolf to produce higher BTUs. Wolf also makes a 22K wok burner(separate cooktop) that focuses the heat in the center like a real wok burner if you stir fry a lot. The BTU rating is actually a calculated number determined by each company with no supporting independent testing available for the consumer to look at. The Culinarian is self rated, @ 23K. This might be useful though for a faster time in heating water or stirfrying. I would also consider Bluestar(@ 22K) as I like the configuration of the burners(star shaped) and there are different sized burners on that range. I have plenty of heat with my Wolf though and rarely keep it at top heat. If I am searing steaks, I use cast iron which holds heat and sears great. I often here posters here say that the flame is directed outward with a sealed burner on the DF, but after I have used it, I think it is splitting hairs and have cooked on open and sealed burners. If you turn the burner on with no pot in place, and bring your hands in, you can feel the area where the heat rises. I don't find the heat going around the pan but you do need to have the flame adjusted correctly. The only issue might be on very small pans on the regular burners, but if I need to use a small pot, I use the small burner. Most of the time the smallest pan I use is 7 inches in diameter. I make caramel in it and have no problem with the sides of the pan over heating. I love the low end simmer on the Wolf DF. There is online a test, linked below, comparing the Wolf AG(not DF), Culinarian and Dacor simmer. They did not include Bluestar. I did the same test on my Wolf DF on all burners and only the simmer burner had a even the sightest area of discoloration the size of a fingernail-the regular burner had none. The proof is in the pudding though and I can hold mashed potatoes and rice and it will not burn. But here again if you get a Culinarian or Bluestar you can get a simmer plate if it is too hot. Some people also have a preference for sealed or unsealed for cleaning purposes. Either works for me. I really like the Wolf oven because of the different modes(conv. bake and roast) and being able to direct the heat and being able to use the digital thermometer. You can buy a digital thermometer though and you can manipulate the heat by hand if you need to. The Wolf or many electric ovens also have the third element(European or true convection) which is useful if you do a lot of multirack baking in keeping the heat even. I don't find a huge difference between gas and electric baking, contrary to what you usually hear. Some might find to be the temperature of the door important if you have small children or don't want to stand in front of a hot oven. the Wolf stays very cool. You might prefer one of the AG ovens if you want to use an infrared broiler and the Culinarian has the rotisserie feature. The Culinarian and Wolf DF are both self cleaning. You can read about many of the features on these ranges but you have to figure out what is useful for the way you cook. You may also want to consider service, both the quality and availability. I haven't had to have service on my range so can't comment. Next kitchen I might get two different thirty inch ranges. One of them would definitely be the Wolf DF though. Here is a link that might be useful: simmer test

I have baked with both over the years and they both will work, but there are certain characteristics to each type of heat, gas and electric that influence how something bakes. You will read often that gas heat is moist and electric is dry because people often just look at the heat source and the combustion of gas releases water as a byproduct. When you look at the whole oven, it turns out it is just the opposite. You might have that humidity for the first few minutes but gas ovens are ventilated much more so that humidity and heat are vented out, and into the kitchen. Electric ovens hold onto the humidity more from what you are cooking so the humidity is higher. Higher humidity is good for baking something that has to rise. It gives a little bit of extra time for the crust to set. It has to do with starch gelatinization. Bread bakers often want a very high humidity environment, so add steam at the beginning of baking. It is very difficult to keep the added steam in a gas oven but people who bake have come up with very inventive ways to do so. They might use a cover over the bread or add a cast iron skillet with lava rocks soaked in water to keep the steam coming. Drier heat is good for the second part of that type of baking so that your baked things can brown. Gas is better for this or you can use convection in an electric oven. Some things are just better in dry heat. We have been baking a lot with meringues the last few months to make gluten free desserts and they do better in dry heat. Roasting is also better in dry heat because it removes the superficial moisture and allows browning to take place. For me, I like an electric oven with convection because I can use the oven without convection when I want the moist heat and turn the fan on when I need it to be drier. You can get excellent roasting with the fan as well. You can add moisture to the gas oven but it just seems like more work to me. there is a guy on one of the baking forums who has his gas oven rigged with a tube through the vent to add water to his skillet with lava rocks for a steam injector. rigged steam injector Depending on how the oven is designed, there can be other features to consider. Many of these features used to be present only on high end ovens but are now becoming available on lower priced ovens. Some electric ovens have various modes that control the direction of heat and speed of the fans- Heat from the top and bottom and fast fan for roasting. Slower fan and heat from the bottom for baking. Many electric ovens have a third element, also called true or European convection which helps keep the temperature of the oven even when you have it full. There are a few gas ovens with this feature as well. In some ovens this works better than in others. Some electric ovens have dual fans and the new Wolf M has fan towers. I would try to read reviews to see how well these features work in each brand. Some electric ovens keep the temperature in a much more narrow range. Look at the broilers. Gas broilers can have low heat unless you get an infrared broiler, which is very hot but narrow. Electric broilers will be wide depending on how many passes it has. I use my broiler with trays of appetizers so need it to be wide but other people like the gas infrared because they broil a couple of steaks at a time. I would read the use and care manual of any oven you are considering.

We have a Capital DF (propane) in our retirement kitchen (upping our cooking game was my main retirement goal so a lot of time and effort went into our choices). Bluestar was only range that was close to the Capital at the rangetop burner level--oven wasn't close. Have owned an AG Wolf for many years in the past and cooked several meals on relative's AG Thermador. Thermador was a surprise and with the full bundle discount it can be a good value buy. Wolf still seems to be wed to a sealed ring burner (not a fan). We have put the Capital through its paces on the rangetop (stirfry, panbroiling, saute, saucing and the like) and use the oven for roasting, broiling and specialty breads and flatbreads. Don't do cakes, pies and cookies so can't speak to those types of baking tasks. I would really encourage to look into service availability--including finding out the actual service firms you'd be using and seeing if they are trained on your products. We live in the rural south and the firm that handled Capital's service went out of business a few years ago and there isn't a replacement. We've had some repairs (some self-inflicted others product-related) that we've fixed our self with help from Capital's CS staff and some years back from Trevor Lawson. This problematic repair business also seems to apply to national brands like our Samsung Fridge which we've gotten to know too well. A caveat: There could be new and improved models out there that weren't when we were looking. I'm usually not allowed in kitchen and appliance stores given my cooking proclivities and a little impulsiveness. Good luck: it's a fun search and very rewarding if it works out.

In the end, I ened up replacing with a Blue Star range with gas for both oven and burners. I've largely been happy with it. The oven igniter broke just after having two years, but it was a relatively minor fix but not covered under warranty.