i would think both would be similar. not sure how the wolf is, but for the ge models with griddle you can remove it and use the (oval) burner "normally"

dc you could check some of the previous threads on this topic over on the appliance forum. I do recall reading them and seems that consensus was to not have the built in griddle - it is much more difficult to clean & keep clean than the stovetop removable model + w/the removable one you do have the option of having 6 burners - something not possible w/the integrated one.
I have a 36" Viking AG and leave the griddle on the left 2 burners - it's heavy cast & I don't have a great storage spot for it-
I would imagine you may get more effective heating w/the integrated one, but not to the extent that it would be noticable to a non professional chef

good luck

Here is a link that might be useful:

We went with the Dacor 36' range top. Included with a nice griddle that sits on top. We use it so often we just leave it out most of the time. Nice to be able to remove it also.

I think you need to ask the people at Wolf: I've heard that some stoves don't allow you to use a single pan accross 2 burners due to air circulation concerns.

If Wolf does allow it, it would certainly be preferable to have the 6 burner configuration. Even if you use the griddle every day, the ease of cleaning and ability to set it aside when you wish would be preferable, IMO.

We purchased the Wolf sealed burner rangetop with 6 burners. My wife wanted to be able to move pans around easily, and with the 6-burner you get a nearly continuous grate system. We have a cast iron griddle from Napa Style that will straddle two burners. Haven't installed the Wolf yet so don't know how the griddle will work but it should be just fine. The 6-burner is also less expensive.

Thank you all. I will hop over to the appliance forum. Quite glad to hear the 6 burner is less expensive as I fear we keep justifying a "little more" here and a "little more" there, which is all adding up to way too "much more."

2nd the reference to the Appliance forum, but I'll add that I have a 36" Bluestar with the griddle in the middle. I use the steel cover as a "staging area" a lot more than I use the griddle itself. If I had it to do over I'd probably get 6 burners and a cover for the middle two to set spoons/spatulas, etc on.

I spent last night reading the appliance forum. I find the opinion split farily evenly on "pain to clean" the griddle, and "so what if it gets a bit stained, that's what the cover is for."

I have to agree the staining would not bother me. I am still worried about the cleaning. In our current Jenn Air the griddle plate is removeable making it easy to clean at the sink.

I have not found much comment yet and which one heats more evenly - if there is a difference.

When I use my griddle it heats very evenly - I make big crepe-like omelettes that take up most of the surface space and then I lay the filling over and when it's done i roll it up.

It's easy to clean and I don't care what it look like because of the cover.

Love my built-in griddle and I find it very easy to clean. The heat is so much more even than when I used a removable plate over two burners.

We have a Thermador rangetop with 4 burners and a griddle. The griddle is very nice and works well. However, if we had it to do over, we would get the 6 burner model and use a good quality griddle on it. The 2 extra burners can aways be with a griddle when needed, but the griddle isn't going to morph into 2 extra burners.

I've had a built-in griddle for years and almost never use it. The two-burner one works much better for us, and I have always wished I had the extra burner in there instead.

Does anyone have those oval bridge burners? They look like the best of both worlds, but I haven't seen them in action.

When we were at a cooking demonstration I saw the Chef using the griddle as a low simmer burner for a number of small pots - I asked about it and he said he loved the large griddle surface for that added function.

I thought of that last night (we are pre-remodel in this kitchen) as I juggled keeping all my dishes going for Thanksgiving dinner.

In our old kitchen I had one of the heavy cast iron griddle/grills. I really didn't like it. It was a pain to store, it was really heavy, it beat up my sink when I cleaned it and it is less precise to keep the surface evenly heated on 2 burners -- however, my old burners were not all the same BTU -- I think that would be easier if all burners were the same.

hth

I have a six-burner Wolf range, no griddle. I use a griddle over two burners and it works fine but I think you'd get more even heating with a built-in griddle.

I think you have to ask yourself how often you will use the griddle as opposed to needing all six burners. It's only DH and me and in the year we've had our range I don't think I've had all 6 burners going more than once. But I use the griddle almost every weekend. I shied away from the built-in because I was coming from a down-draft JennAir with a griddle that was a PITA to clean. Since the Wolf has a cover, you might not find it a bad option if you'll really use it.

We have a Wolf 48" and chose 4 burners with a 22" griddle and love love love it. Your lifestyle/cooking style should lend to your decision on which way to go. I've never ever had 4 burners going at the same time while wishing for one more; in fact, I only occasionally have all four going at the same time - but that's my cooking style. We tend to use our griddle frequently for so much - not just breakfast but for other meals as well - sandwiches, vegetables, rice - think hibatchi style; reheating pizza's or browning other breads like bagles, english muffins, etc. I do once a month cooking and can cook large batches of pancakes, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast and lunch burritos.

As for cleanup, on a daily basis after each use and the griddle has cooled down a bit, I splash some water on it and use a dough scraper to scrape off the water and any food particles (keeping my hand covered with a hot glove or small towel because of the steam created by the heat/water). It cleans up in less than a minute after the initial cooldown. The catch tray is easy to remove on my oven and cleans easily as well.

I think some people believe you have to clean the griddle back to it's initial shine after each use, hence the concern on the cleaning. But seriously, you toss water on it and (depending on width of griddle) with 3-6 scrapes of the dough scraper you're done with no effort - literally less than a minute....unless you are just a slow scraper, lol! You can on occasion use a griddle brick to revamp the shine some, but once cooked on, the griddle will never fully return to it's original shine.

Either way - hey it's a new rangetop! Gotta love that!

Oh, and our griddle does have a cover which we typically leave on when the griddle is not in use. During meals when not using the griddle, it's a great landing spot as well.

Good luck.

Brownli,

Thank you so very much for your response. Your description of the cleanup is quite helpful. I am still torn, but your message give me the type of information I need to make a decision.

I wish we had room for the 48", for if we had a griddle I definitely wish we could have the wider one. It sounds like you use your griddle similar to how we use ours.

Do you have the sealed or unsealed burners? Are you glad you made the choice you did?

I vote for all burners. Then use a nonstick griddle and cast iron grill. They work beautifully and they are so much easier to clean.

dcwesley - we have sealed burners and out of complete ignorance on the pro/con of each, all I can tell you is that we are not wishing we had chosen something different than what we have.... I clean easily around the burners and can remove the caps to wash by hand if needed. If these sealed burners cook less than optimum - I wouldn't know it.

Now if I recall - ugh our remodel was finished in Jan 2007 so you'll want to check on this yourself as ours is the full range, not just the rangetop- but the catch/drip trays for grease/food differ between units with the sealed versus unsealed. For the unsealed there are pans underneath the burners and griddle that run the depth of the range top, they slide out to be emptied and cleaned. On the sealed units, there is no drip tray under the burners but there is a tray for the griddle. This tray is better described as a trough that runs the width of the griddle, is positioned at the front and is lifted out for cleaning. Most often I just use one hand to lift and carry it to sink - if it's really full of liquid then I use 2 hands for the steady - really easy - really compact and really light in weight.

As for the size of the griddle - come on....you're not one of those who thinks size matters - lol? I will be honest - it's nice having the extra size but I more often use just one side or the other; using both sides mostly during my OAMC or the 'big weekend breakfast' when my DH and I both fight for the beloved role of SOC(short order cook) and cook side by side! But the smaller size honestly - would work just fine for us as well.

I do not have any experience with the separate griddles and cleanup - our neighbors use one that spans 2 burners and I watch them clean theirs - similar to cleaning a larger platter in a sink - also simple - but if that's the description of cleanup for others as well, then I'd have to vote that my built-in griddle is much easier/faster to clean - given what I cook. That said - for the occasional griddle brick shine-up - you do have to put some elbow grease into the clean - I've only used the brick once on mine - lol! Yea, it's sporting a nice dark color - regardless - it is clean.

Hope this helps. Again, either way, I'm sure you'll be pleased.

Brownli,

Again you've been most helpful. Could I digress and ask you another question about your burners? Are your burners identical to each other, or, like the sealed rangetop, do you have 3 of one setting, and 1 of a lower setting? If that is the case do you miss having the fourth burner at full output, or the other three burners not a super-low simmer?

Debbie

dcwesley - to clarify - we have the 'sealed' burners not the unsealed, so reread the above post if you thought the reverse - one of the four burners on our sealed unit does have the lower btu with a melt feature but they all have the simmer feature.

Understand that I'm just an average Jo'ann in the kitchen -so for me, all the burners are awesome on their simmer function. I've yet to burn anything I've set to simmer - yes, even that which I forgot about until much later...:). I have been really amazed at this working funtion - none of my other ranges ever simmered well.

Ok, I'll share my embarrassing story....for the first six months of use - I couldn't stop bragging about how well all of my burners simmered. No matter what I was simmering, size of pan, which burner - all great - and while not a baker either, chocolate and sugar sauces simmered perfectly as well.

Then one day, in a rush of turning on/off a burner, I over 'spun' the knob and guess what...it spun to the actual simmer controls. DOH! Now I knew before buying this range that each simmer had it's own hi-lo range, separate from the regular burners hi-lo range - but once in my hands - I forgot, didn't look closely enough - who knows, but I never spun the knob the full 180 to get to the simmer controls.

Point of sharing this story, is that all the burners - for me, on their regular, lowest output performed a really good simmer function. I'm sure those that are really skilled bakers/chefs would find this to be untrue for their varied applications. And of course, once I found the simmer functions, ooh so nice...you can really really walk away - tend to other tasks.

As for the lower output of the smaller burner - again, for me, this has not been a problem. I'm generally never cooking 4 pots/pans of anything at the same time, nor trying to bring anything to boiling on more than one or 2 burners, and definitely never using the highest output of all the burners at the same time. I guess to further add, every rangetop I've ever had, always had one smaller/output burner - whether electric, gas, raised or flat burners and I never had an issue with having one smaller burner on those. Again, this goes back to life/cooking style.

We went through the same decision process when deciding on grill, griddle, none, both or one....we really had to evaluate how we cooked currently and how we wanted to cook going forward. Well, we live in TX so grilling outdoors can/is a year-round possibility for us - so it made sense for us to eliminate the grill from our range. We knew we wanted the griddle, but the next decision for us was how many burners, vs size of griddle. I knew that I would never use more than 4 burners at a time (I've had a 5 burner range before - never used all 5 at the same time) - so that helped with our decision. Plus we knew from younger years as SOCs the varied cooking we could do with the griddle - hence the larger griddle for us. On a side note, when we were in the planning phase of our remodel - many posters at that time chose other rangetops that offered a burner at an even higher btu for wok cooking. We considered that, but again, our lifestyle dictated that our vege/meat habatchi cooking was better suited to the griddle.

And again - you'll love your rangetop - no matter your configuration.

Bownli,

I can't thank you enough for the help. I have been REALLY struggling with the sealed / unsealed decision. (I did note in your earlier post that you had the sealed, but I believe you have the range where we are looking at the reangetop with wall ovens.)

I heavily lean towards the sealed as I am known for letting pasta boil over, and DH spatters grease quite a bit when he cooks. But I was quite concernd about the lower powered burner and the simmer on the other burners not going as low. I have also read posts that the sealed burners do not work as well with small pans. I feel much better reading youp post. (I would not classify us as sophisticated cooks, but we do cook a decent amount from scratch.)

Although we live in Indaina we still grill out year round on our gas grill. An indoor grill seems just too much work to clean. We have one we can use on our electric Jenn Air which I think we have used less than 10 times in 15+ years.

On our Jenn Air we only have 2 burners, which at times has been an issue, but we have managed, especially as our microwave does a credible job on most fresh vegetables. So even 4 burners will be a treat.

So a sealed Wolf 36" rangetop it is. Now we just have to make the griddle decision. Perhaps I will get up the nerve to go to the local store and ask them to let me cook pancakes on the built-in griddle, as well as our cast iron griddle laid across two burners. I would love to see head-to-head which heats up quicker (unless there is a dramtic difference probably not too important) and which heats more evenly (quite important).

(If there is someone who uses the Wolf rangetop with a separate griddle I woud be interested to know the dimensions of your griddle.)

I had a 6 burner Five Star gas in my last house with built in griddle and rarely used it. It may have cooked better than my cast iron portable over 2 burners but it was a pain to clean. I use my cast iron portable griddle/grill over 2 burners ALL the time, perfect to take to sink and a minute later, it's ready to go again. If fact I like it so much, I have 2 of them, one non-stick and one regular, I use the non-stick for fish. I do shrimp kabobs, sea bass, flounder, salmon, scallops, etc. and does a wonderful job and your expensive fish isn't stuck to the griddle or grill or falling through the grates into the stove. I am also finding we are moving away from pancakes, we prefer waffles and use our belgium waffle iron when we want something like that. My built in griddle was an expensive spoon rest as I kept it's lid down most of the time.

Mollie,

Thank you SO much for the input. It is so helpful to connect with those that have experieince with the set-up. When you cook on the cast iron portable griddle are you able to cook over the middle section, or is it an unusable "cool zone"?

Debbie

Just think what you want to cook on the griddle before investing in it. Everyone has the romantic idea of doing the "family" big breakfast on the built in griddle. In today's busy families, at least mine, that isn't a common occurance. That is an expensive thing to buy for just holidays or the occasional Sunday breakfast. If you see yourself doing that a lot, then go for it. We are all health conscious now (getting older does that to you) and not doing so much big breakfasts anymore, mostly low fat type of things. I use my portable grill/griddle to pop my marinated boneless chiks on the grill side and get those nice grill marks on them and nice brown color, and then pop them into the oven while I do something else. I do the same thing with pork chops. I use the grill or griddle for fish. I'm sure the grill/griddle (portable) isn't as hot in the center as the ends on the burners but it is cast iron with great radiant heat and I move the food around on the grill/griddle and never had a problem. Also, I love the fact the portable has the griddle on one side and grill on the other. I use both alot. Make a list of the things you are going to cook on the built in griddle, think how often you would do it, and what your family life is like and that should help you decide. I confess, I bought the built in griddle because my best friend had one and she loved it and used it a lot. She had 4 boys and her husband loved cooking big breakfasts and hamburgers on it. It didn't work so well for me as I had 2 boys and 2 girls and the girls were so health/diet concerned and wouldn't eat all the pancakes plus my DH although liked to cook didn't have time and I had a demanding job outside the home and watching my own weight. We liked our hamburgers outside on the grill and not on the griddle. I use my non-stick portable to grill vegetables and love that too. Just figure out your lifestyle and that should help you decide.

Brownli and Mollie, great informative posts!

Mollie, care to share which portable griddle you use? Brand name, size, handle type? I'm looking for a different one since the one I use has handles that stick out too far and therefore tend to get hot from the burner flames.

Thanks, Diana

Actually, I hate to admit it but I do have several of these and love each one. I use the smaller
All-Clad LTD Nonstick Grill Pan, Square for fish because usually just DH and myself and so it is the right size and fits on one burner and a great handle that doesn't get hot. I also have the All-Clad LTD Nonstick Double Burner Griddle Pan. The handles stick up so not hot. Neither of these are reversable and I use them the most. I also have the reversable Lodge Pro Griddle/Grill. They are on sale lots of places, Williams-Sonoma or Amazon, just check prices. Actually ALL-Clad makes a panini set for one burner that you could use for sandwiches and just a grill. I'm with you about the handles, that's why I have several and not just the reversable because any reversable has the flat handles that are so hot. Look at Amazon.com because they show most of the models and what they don't show look at Williams-Sonoma.com and measure your burners so you get one that fits.

I was lucky enough to own an O'Keefe & Merritt stove for 25 years. Only 3 of the 4 burners worked. It did have a working griddle. I loved it for making quesadillas, grilled cheese, and the occasional pancakes, but what I really loved was the extra space it gave me when canning or just cooking a regular meal. I doubt I'll ever have the need for 6 burners, but I know how precious that real estate in the middle can be. So what if it costs a little bit more ... it's my dream kitchen. Get what makes you happy.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thanks for the recs, Mollie! I really enjoy shopping at WS so I'll check out their selection next time I'm there.