Ranges with double ovens

[Stephen Tashiro]

There are now many models of electric range that have two ovens in them. Any comments on whether the smaller second oven is any more useful than just having a range with a single oven and a separate large tabletop oven?

[David Bassett]

We never really considered a table top oven, so no valid opinion of its merits.

We love the short 1/2 oven in our range and use it almost exclusively. It heats up much faster, takes full (home*) size pans & trays, and provides all the functions of a normal oven. The bigger oven has convection (& other?) modes, but we're not savvy enough to appreciate them, and only really use it when we have more than one item and need multiple racks or have something huge (e.g. a turkey) and need the volume.

(*I've been told that restaurant ovens are larger and I should call the normal home size a 1/2 size sheet pan.)

[Mark Rainey]

Had an electric range with two ovens. Never used one. And we cook a lot.

[Bill Dufour]

Never heard of a table top oven. Do you mean a roaster like from the 1950's ? Our GE is a microwave on top an an electric oven below.
Bill D

PS: It has Sabath Mode for Jewish folks! Turns off the microwave and most automatic features for 3 days on demand.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

When we remodeled our kitchen with a bump out 6 years ago we installed a gas oven with two ovens in it and an electric wall oven. We have used all 3 ovens a few times when we had family and friends over for dinner. Once when we held a dinner for friends and family to celebrate our 50th anniversary, having the 3 ovens was a great convenience! The bottom oven in the range is shorter in height but is truly a fully functional oven, not just a warmer oven.

[Jim Becker]

I believe that the Samsung electric range currently in the kitchen here at our new property has a "split" oven setup where a slide-in divider provides an upper and lower oven, each being able to be separately controlled. When the heavy divider is pulled out, it reverts to a single, standard size oven. I've only used it once to-date. And I hate the range with a passion, coming from a 48" gas Thermador, but that's a different story and one that will be rectified once our other property sells. I noticed the dual oven setup on a few of the induction ranges that would possibly be a fit for me should I not be able to get natural gas and proper ventilation into the kitchen. The only time I could see it being an issue is if I ever wanted to roast something taller than an oven, but that's not terribly likely. My grill has tall lids, so I can also do that outside.

Most of the time for cooking that would entail an oven, I'm now using a counter top Ninja device that Air fries, Air Roasts, Bakes, Toasts, etc. and really like it. It's singular downfall is again, height.

[Thomas McCurnin]

Full scale dinners for a crowd need a double oven, so one dish can cook while another one is warming up or cooking. We cook a lot and use the double oven about four times a year. Our oven is a 1940s gas oven Gaffers and Safler which has five burners, a griddle and two full size ovens. We have refurbished this twice now, and I wouldn't want to cook on anything else.

[Brian Elfert]

My GE range has a warming drawer at the bottom that I have never used. The warming drawer replaces the pots and pans drawer a lot of ranges have.

I don't have enough space to host a full scale dinner so only one oven. My kitchen is tiny and the living room is tiny (No dining/eating area except in the kitchen). I think a lot of people have two ovens because it is an expectation for an upscale kitchen even if you never use two ovens at once. Keeping up with the Jones so to speak.

[Brian Deakin]

A tip from the UK
I have a double oven but what is surprising is the larger oven is shallower in depth than the smaller oven and will not accommodate my largest roasting tin but the tin will fit in the smaller oven

The reason , the larger oven is fan assisted and the fan reduces the depth of the oven the smaller oven is not fan assisted

So I would suggest the following
Measure the dimensions of you largest oven trays and identify if they will fit in both ovens or ideally take your largest oven tray into the store and see how it fits

[Bill Dufour]

GE makes a stove with gas burners and an electric oven. Many cooks prefer electric ovens for some reason.
Bill D

[Jim Becker]

GE makes a stove with gas burners and an electric oven. Many cooks prefer electric ovens for some reason.
Bill D
"Everybody" does dual fuel at the higher end. Electric ovens are preferred for baking because they are more stable temperature wise. Dual fuel ranges are more expensive, but very worthy for folks who are serious about their baking.

[Brian Elfert]

GE makes a stove with gas burners and an electric oven. Many cooks prefer electric ovens for some reason.


I have dual fuel. The range I got was a floor model so it was $1,000. I never would have gone dual fuel otherwise due to expense. My dual fuels range looks just like a normal range and not like one of the high end stoves like Jim is talking about.

The house had an electric stove so it had an electric line already. I added gas to the house and had a gas line put in the kitchen intending to get a gas range. It turns out a dangerous conversion from three wire to four wire was done so I had to run a new correct four wire cable.

[Tom Bender]

Having an oven or microwave oven above the countertop scares me. Wearing hot food is really unpleasant.

[Scott Clausen]

I learned years ago the hard way before microwave ovens were a thing that a gas oven needs fresh air for combustion so therefore a vent to release hot air. Fire that baby up to bake a potato without central air in the summer and you won't do that twice. I switched to dual fuel and years later I went back to gas but now have a commercial style hood to catch the heat. Back to the OP for a large meal while entertaining my wife needs to go through mental gymnastics to make it work in one oven saying "I wish I had two ovens"

[Brian Elfert]

I learned years ago the hard way before microwave ovens were a thing that a gas oven needs fresh air for combustion so therefore a vent to release hot air. Fire that baby up to bake a potato without central air in the summer and you won't do that twice. I switched to dual fuel and years later I went back to gas but now have a commercial style hood to catch the heat. Back to the OP for a large meal while entertaining my wife needs to go through mental gymnastics to make it work in one oven saying "I wish I had two ovens"

Doesn't an electric oven also generate heat? An electric oven may be "sealed", but eventually all the heat is going to make it through the body of the oven. My mother has had only electric ovens since at least 1981. She never wants to use the oven when the air conditioning is running due to having to remove the heat from the house. (Makes sense to me.)

[Scott Clausen]

If an electric oven makes the room warm the gas oven makes it hot. Kind of like cracking the door on an electric oven.

[Brian Elfert]

You're still generating the same basic number of BTUs to bake with either heat source. My guess is that an electric oven dissipates the heat over a much longer period of time since there is no vent like on a gas oven. I generally turn on the vent fan when using the oven in the summer although I am also pulling out some cooled air.

My first house had a gas oven and I don't recall it getting hotter, but that was a while ago. I did think the gas oven didn't bake as nice as the electric ovens I had had at my parent's house and my apartment.

[Tom Bender]

A gas oven does need to vent the combustion fumes into the kitchen, an electric oven does not so gas heats the house more. I'll try to put some numbers on it.

Say the oven burns at 80% efficiency, it must dump something like 20% of the input into the kitchen to dispose of the fumes. This rate will not change when the oven is not burning at high fire. It will dump 20% of the high fire rate all the time. So if the oven needs to burn at a rate of 60% for a given task it will dump 20/60 or 1/3 of the heat into the kitchen.

Let's not forget heat that leaks from the body of the oven. This might be the same for gas or electric, say 5%. Add a couple % for peeking in to see if the cookies are done and we have 33 + 5 + 2 = 40% for gas vs 7% for electric. Yes a gas stove needs a vent that goes outside, not just back into the kitchen.

[Bill Dufour]

Older gas ovens used a chimney. They dropped that i 1960's and told everyone you had to buy a vent hood and run it whenever the oven was on. No a days we would call this a feature not a downgrade.
Entrophy tells us that all energy consumed by the oven ends up inside the house. An electric oven just takes longer to transfer all the heat into the room. Unless it has make up ducts, no home ones do, a vent hood pumps conditioned air outside at a good pace.
Bill D

[David Publicover]

We had a dual fuel range. At the time, the all gas ranges we saw did not have self cleaning ovens. The dual fuel with electric oven did. That cemented the deal for us! We did find the electric oven to work very well. Ours was an Electrolux Icon.

[Ted Shrader]

We (me really) recently redid our kitchen. (I built the cabinets from cherry via a SMC source and did all the other plumbing, electrical, flooring, drywall work myself. But that s not wt you asked.)

We chose a Kitchenaid Dual Fuel range with two ovens. The cooktop is gas, the ovens are electric. The larger (bottom) oven is convection. It has been in service now for about 8 months. Dual ovens was a good decision for us. You can do two dishes at the same time at different temperatures. We use that feature! Not all the time, but it is available. Depending on the height of the dish, the top oven gets used since it heats up quicker. We have never encountered a size restriction with the lower oven.

Good luck choosing,
Ted

[John Stankus]

A gas oven does need to vent the combustion fumes into the kitchen, an electric oven does not so gas heats the house more. I'll try to put some numbers on it.

Say the oven burns at 80% efficiency, it must dump something like 20% of the input into the kitchen to dispose of the fumes. This rate will not change when the oven is not burning at high fire. It will dump 20% of the high fire rate all the time. So if the oven needs to burn at a rate of 60% for a given task it will dump 20/60 or 1/3 of the heat into the kitchen.

Let's not forget heat that leaks from the body of the oven. This might be the same for gas or electric, say 5%. Add a couple % for peeking in to see if the cookies are done and we have 33 + 5 + 2 = 40% for gas vs 7% for electric. Yes a gas stove needs a vent that goes outside, not just back into the kitchen.

I think your efficiencies are way off. Remember the gas oven needs a source of air. It does take a lot of air, which is generally at room temperature (i.e. the make up air cools off everything).


An article on the Green Building website below quotes a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study with Electric ovens at 12-14% and gas at about 6%-7%. It looks like they define cooking efficiency as heat transferred to the food.
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/efficient-cooking

I did think it interesting that the self-cleaning models were more efficient due to their increased insulation. (just don't use the self cleaning feature)

As in everything more insulation is better. On a side note, if you want your pot of water to boil quicker put a lid on it.

John

[Gary Ragatz]

Electric ovens have vents, too. A couple of stoves ago, we had an electric with coil-style elements on the range. The oven vented under the right-rear range element. With the oven on 350 or so and the burner off, the burner would get too hot to touch. A more recent glass-top electric had the oven vent in the "backsplash" part of the range.

[Kev Williams]

Our GE electric oven vents out at the bottom front just above the floor. The air that comes out never really feels 'warm', even with the oven at 475. While all the heat will eventually end up in the house, it never noticeably warms up the room. Takes hours to fully cool down...

[Roger Feeley]

In our last house, we had a dual fuel range with gas cooktop and double oven with the smaller one on top. We seldom used the lower one. The small oven was great for 90% of what we did. It heated up in a flash.

For our current house, we got the double oven again. This time we went with an induction cooktop and will never go back to gas. I didn’t like cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the gas cooktop. I was never satisfied with the simmer with gas until I got a simmer plate. The glass induction top heats faster than our gas one did and is a snap to clean.

[Paul F Franklin]

In our last house, we had a dual fuel range with gas cooktop and double oven with the smaller one on top. We seldom used the lower one. The small oven was great for 90% of what we did. It heated up in a flash.

For our current house, we got the double oven again. This time we went with an induction cooktop and will never go back to gas. I didn’t like cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the gas cooktop. I was never satisfied with the simmer with gas until I got a simmer plate. The glass induction top heats faster than our gas one did and is a snap to clean.

Good to hear. We've settled on a dual oven induction range as part of our kitchen remodel. I expect we'll mostly use the smaller oven except when entertaining, which we used to do fairly often and hope to again soon. But even when it's just the two of us, we tend to cook several things on the weekend and have leftovers during the week, so there are plenty of times when a second real oven will get used. We have gas, and could have gone with a gas range or dual fuel, but the air quality issues with gas are a real concern. I trust myself to turn on the vent before lighting a burner and leaving the vent run, but my wife would just never do it.

[Brian Elfert]

There is a good chance I will go for an induction range the next time I need a range. I am plumbed for both gas and 50 amp electric at the range. I have dual fuel now. I have solar so I would prefer to use electricity.

[Dave Lehnert]

Have a double oven and use the smaller top one 95% of the time.

Do realize a double oven does not have a drawer in the bottom, We used it to store lids and had to fined a new storage place.

[Todd Mason-Darnell]

We just bought a range with a double over this spring and really like it. For small stuff, we use the small oven. Being able to cook multiple items at different temps at the same time is nice as well.

The one downside is that bigger oven is at the bottom which is basically at floor level--that is a long way to bend down these days.