Wolf is probably easier as you can use a bit more aggressive cleaning agent for the interior surface and most of the surface is rather smooth.

For Miele, you have to be quite gentle with cleaning agent. Miele seems to approve only their DGCleaner spray as cleaning agent to not harm the PerfectClean finish. However, non scratch scorer can be used.

Basically, I have found that only the area behind the grill is more difficult to clean, and that only applies to splattered oil and grease which could be baked on e.g. cooking roasted pork belly with oil rubbed on the skin. Most of the time for me, it is just a quick wipe after use.

First two pictures are from Miele Centre in Sydney where they use DGC 6800 for cooking classes practically daily. The last three pictures are my five-month-old oven which has a fair bit less baked on grease behind the grill. So if you think you can live with a little bit of baked on grease, for which a bit more elbow grease would get them out, then Miele would be ok for you.

It also depends is you have one or two ovens. I own another oven besides the Miele CSO and use that for roasts. When I do use the CSO for roasting I make sure to soak (there's a special application called soaking) and wipe before using the oven again. Other than that, it's mostly just a quick wipe with a damp cloth.

Don't know the Wolf one (I live in EU and don't think it's available here) but I'm pretty sure SS would be easier to clean.

V-Zug makes the CSO for Wolf, although based on older model if you look at current V-Zug line up.

houztongirl,

Can I politely suggest that you acknowledge peoples' kind responses to your question?

Hi Kitchengirl,

I clicked the "say thank you" button for both Chanop and Jo. I assumed this was sufficient. Is there some other etiquette that I am not aware of?

Yes, don't add to a thread just to ask the OP to say thank you

lol

Sorry houztongirl, I read the whole thread, got to the bottom and didn't see a formal reply from you. Yes, in this Twitter world, it's sufficient!

[I feel a lot of newer people at GW aren't sufficiently appreciative of the time, knowledge and skill brought to this forum by some, often long-time responders… I also lament their dwindling #s here. That's the context of my post]. Also, many people seem to be coming from the Houzz side and it is a lot messier (many sloppy posters, unanswered questions, babblers, and often more commercial there (pros looking for biz), in my humble opinion. GW used to be the place for amazing sharing of info, much more then, than now.

I went to a cooking demo at Pirch appliance store last week and the chef used/demonstrated both the Miele and the Wolf combi steam ovens side by side. The chef thought the Wolf was easier to clean. They both seemed like great products and I might have leaned towards the Miele because it's plumbed and would match the Miele range that we are getting. However, two factors led to me choosing the Wolf: one is that is will match the Wolf mw drawer that will be under it, and more importantly is that my dh liked the Wolf more than the Miele. Up to now he has questioned my need for a third oven and since he was excited about the Wolf I decided to let him have it!

What did your dh like about the Wolf combi (over the miele)? My dh is also questioning the need for a steam oven..... lol

He liked the smooth interior for cleaning, the slightly larger size, the 4 racks vs 3, and the ease of filling the water tank thingie. He preferred filling the water vs plumbed for some reason. I didn't question all the specifics that led to his choice because I was thrilled that he was suddenly on board with it since earlier that day he tried to get out of coming with me to the demo. The food prepared in both ovens was delicious and I am very excited to be getting it. The lack of broiler doesn't bother me since I'll have one in the range. If your dh is skeptical I would highly recommend seeing one in use/trying it out!

Chanop- that looks delicious! I'm happy you are so pleased with your choice.

Yum, Chanop! Looks delish.

As I said, never seen the wolf oven, but from what I understand from other users, it's not as customisable as Miele (eg. You can select temp and humidity % in 1 increments while wolf only offers steam on or off) - someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks to all for your insights and observations. It sounds like we can get either clean enough without so much effort that we would be afraid to use it.

That pork belly looks amazing! Can you share your settings? I have a Miele non-plumbed CSO.

Chanop, Can you please reflect on Jo's Wolf C-S oven comment, as it relates to cooking your pork belly? Ie, how do you think cooking the pork belly in a Wolf convex steam oven would differ than how you cooked it in your Miele combi-steam?

For that belly, I preheated the oven in combi Fan Plus (convection and steam) at 225˚C (435˚F) 100% humidity, then inserted the belly. After 30 minutes, I got most of the crackling on the skin except middle part, but I thought I should have accelerated it a bit so I lowered humidity level down to 50%. However, some burning smell came out through the vent after a couple of minutes, so I raised the humidity level back to 100%. Total cook time was about 45 minutes.

Next time I do this pork belly roast, probably will stick with 225˚C 100% humidity through out, but will make sure that I will allow rendered fat to run out a bit better to get better crackling in the middle.

Jo is right, that Miele combi allows user to set temperature and humidity in 1 ˚C or 1 ˚F and 1 % increment. Big thank to her for the info. For some reasons, I have been under a mode where I think it is 5˚C and 5% increment. Perhaps, through the use of on-screen scroller. 1˚C and 1% granularities are achievable through numeric key pad.

Fine granularity means that user can control wet bulb and dry bulb temperatures better which means user can control degree of browning and food temperature better. See these articles Nathan Myhrvold’s Recipe for a Better Oven and The Chemistry of the Barbecue “Stall” for example. I am still learning about this aspect of cooking myself.

For V-Zug combi steamer and Wolf CSO, I might try using convection humid and convection steam and see which mode produces better result. V-Zug combi steam queen touts convection humid mode herself, on the blog. When compared ability to set humidity level, V-Zug and Wolf offer just three modes: convection for dry oven via opening a vent; convection humid for containing all the moisture generated by the food in the oven via closing a vent; and convection steam via closing a vent with additional steam.

For a side note on cleaning, that Miele HGBB 71 Roasting insert worked wonder keeping rendered fat below and not splattering. There was some fat splatter from crackling burst on oven walls and ceilings. After a soak program, it was easily wiped clean. There might have been some extra burnt brown grease spots here and there, but a good amount of those will come out next time I use Miele DGCleaner.

That looks so good, did you marinate it?

Just lightly salted, and kept in the fridge uncovered to dry out skin overnight. It was more or less, Chinese style plain roasted pork belly, just let the quality of the pork from good butchers and farmers speak for itself.

I was able to get quality belly, but not with skin. Hopefully it will still be good, probably no reason to try to dry it out at all?

Probably not need to dry the skin in the fridge. The way I understand the theory behind drying the skin is to reduce the time it needs to cook at high temperature to get the crackle going. Skin will crackle quicker if it is drier to begin with. For a small cut, this will help not to overcook the meat, if crackling happens within the cooking time frame.

In combi mode, same argument probably still apply even though the cooking environment is kept at higher humidity level compared with normal oven.

Re perfect clean Miele surface: I don't have their combi-steam oven. But I do have an older Miele oven with Perfect Clean interior and no self-clean function. We are messy and don't clean after use all the time, so sometimes there's accumulated baked on mess in there. Since my oven is now 13 years and going strong, I am way less afraid to be more aggressive/experiment in cleaning it. I've used a powerful steam cleaner (which I am fairly certain Miele says not to use ever) and used very stiff scrub brush on the end of the steam cleaner to get very baked on stuff off. Never damaged/scratched the perfect clean surface. So, I can't tell you to be recklessly aggressive in how you clean your oven, because I can't say for sure, but I can say that the Perfect Clean on my old oven seems way tougher than Miele suggests when they say just to use some one particular cleaner on it. I've never bought their cleaner. Oh, and I have noticeably scratched my Miele stainless cooktop (but not that noticeable overall IMO) using same kind of recklessly aggressive scrubbing efforts over time on there. But I clean that one more often, and it's been 13 years! All the Miele markings, logo, etc, are long ago scrubbed off the cooktop, lol.

From what I understand, Miele strongly suggest to clean their Perfect Clean finish in order to retain ease of cleaning property. Their grey baking tray in perfect clean finish for example, can be easily scrub of the baked on grease from previous cook with warm water/soap and not scratch scorer. If this surface is damaged from some types of cleaners and scorers, it would not be as easy to clean, but does not mean that coating will chip.

In the manual, it even say that knives can be used to cut on the tray directly. So it must be pretty tough to certain degree, although, I probably would only allow softer knives below HRC 55-56. Higher hardness knives, like those Japanese knives at HRC 62 + that can scratch glass, probably will damage Perfect Clean finish.

The main issue with power steam cleaner is possibility of damaging electronic if steam for some reason go though some openings and reach electronic. If you are careful, it would work of course.

I have had my Miele combi for six months only, so time will tell.

Holy cow - I can't wait to install my Gaggenau steam oven if not just to ONLY cook that pork belly!!!!!!!

Cooked some pork belly last night. Initially messed up my settings, only had it on 350, but caught it after 10 minutes, increased to max (437), 100% humidity the whole time. No skin, but it was a beautiful Berkshire pork. Came out great, cooked through, but still moist, nice texture to the remaining fat. I did it using a perforated pan with another pan to catch the rendered fat below. It did make a mess though, first time the inside got really dirty.

I've been playing with preheating the oven when using this mode, using the rapid preheat convection mode, then switching to combination mode, it just seems to take too long to get up to temp when starting from scratch. Do you use the splatter screen over the convection fan when doing your belly this way?

From the photo and everyone's on line drooling, seems like the convection steam oven is great for cooking meats. We are deciding if we will get this oven. I think it would be our 3rd oven in our new kitchen and we are worried it would be overkill. We are mostly vegetarian/pescatarian and a larger family. I worry about having this as a 2nd oven because the cavity doesn't seem big enough to hold food for our family of 7. I am also wondering what, besides meats (which we don't prepare more than a few times a year), would we cook in here. The cleaning thing also has me a little worried...but maybe that is a cooking meat problem?

I use it as a regular oven in addition to the steam and combi mode as it was purchased to complement a 30" wall oven instead of buying double oven. It is wonderful for reheating food as you can add moisture while reheating and the results are more like fresh out of the oven rather than left overs. All of my 9X13 baking dishes (emile henry/le crueset/ pyrex etc) with handles fit. It is awesome for steaming vegetables and comes with partial and full perforated steam pans. "hard boiled (steamed)" eggs are a snap - no cracks and shells are a fairly easy peel. It is also great for baking bread. I use for all types of rice and risotto (no stirring required). I know other posters use it extensively for doing a combi broil with fish with excellent results. I use this oven more than my 30" wall oven due to its versatility. I have not used it for meat as we use our grill. I have not found cleaning a major issue but I am pretty diligent about rinsing after use.

@dbabrams, nowadays whenever I cook anything with enough oil, fat, or liquid, such tiny droplets of these may be sucked in via the fan, then I would use the screen to keep the fan clean. It may take a bit longer to heat up, but not by much.

@karen, combi is great for non meat dishes as well, full steam mode for basic veg, combi mode baking of pastries, cake, bread etc. Have a browse at Miele steam cookbook, and combi steam cookbook to see some possibilities and ideas.

kimg Thank you. We are looking to get a 36" dual fuel range, a 30" french door wall oven and then the Convection Steam Oven, but I do worry that 3 ovens is overkill. When using a 9x13 pyrex does it fill with condensation? Do you have to use the perforated pans when using steam? What about when using combo features? For the size of my family, I often roast/bake on a 21x15 sheet pan. Would that fit into the Miele CSO? Thanks.

For Miele CSO, you cannot fit even a half sheet pan. I have Chicago Metallic jelly roll pan 14.75x9.75 that would fit on a rack. The best way to maximize space usage in the oven is to buy Miele own baking sheets which would fit on the rack and increase usable space per rack. They are available in both perforated (HBBL 71) and unperforated (HBB71) versions.

In steaming mode it depends on the actual food whether to use a perforated pan or solid pan. Typically perforated pan is used for most food so that condensated water does not collect with food. For rice, risotto, grain, soup, on the other hand, require solid pan.

For combi mode at low temp, stainless steel, perforated and solid, pans may be used. At high heat, those thin pan will warp and will be difficult to take out of the oven after it jams in the side rail, so better use rack or baking tray.

I too use my CSO as my go to oven, only use the 30" for whole birds, large trays of things like nachos when I need to fit in a larger pan.

Chanop,

I really hope that I don't regret selecting the Wolf convex-steam over the Miele combi-steam model! Reading about the flexibility of %ages steam above makes me worry… I chose the Wolf for ease of use and ease of cleaning, but hope that I won't find Wolf/Vzug's very different features a limitation (yes, I have the 30" wall oven on order, too, but I mean in comparison to the Miele combi). My deadline for appliance changes was 2 days ago!

How do you like your wolf

Can't decide between wolf or meile

After using the Miele for about 10 months I have to say that I love it. Makes great roasted veggies, pizza came out awesome in it, bread is terrific, fish is great and we are frequently steaming veggies and hard cooking eggs in it. Gets used practically daily. Steam cooking requires very little clean up (just wiping up moisture to let oven dry between uses). Baking and roasting can often leave black residue on the bottom. Doing an appliance soak or cleaning after running the steam cycle can help. Does take some elbow grease to keep the inside looking like new.

Thanks is the inside stainless steel ?

@kitchengirl, are you happy that you went with the Wolf over the Miele? Or do you wish that you had more precise control?

I have had the Wolf combi oven for approximately a year now, and use it on average 4 days/week. Cooking is fabulous. I barely use my regular oven anymore.

BUT, cleaning the combi is a chore. if, like me, you like it clean after each use. The problem is that the fan sucks in and traps grease and food, and in order to clean it, you need to take the entire back panel off, which is held in place with hex screws. Six of them. Hex screws!! When you get your hands on some hex drivers to get the back panel off, you then need to unscrew the side racks - that is 2 more screws, but easier as only fingers required to unscrew them. I pop the left and right rack as well as the back panel into the dishwasher and then go to town on the interior. The fan blades are a pain to deal with, and the upper oven ceiling and sides have objects to go around. It's not the easiest setup.

I think a better engineering design would have been to make the back panel pop off with 2 finger operated screws, and then to have all surfaces smooth to easily clean. Not sure how to have made the fan blades easier to deal with regarding cleaning.

Just an engineer's opinion... one who likes to cook and gets irritated by engineering designs that don't take ergonomics into consideration.

My second beef is that the pans that you use at high heat have a tendency to warp, and so contort when you slide them out of the rack. This is quite the surprise when you have food at high heat suddenly flip up off them when they exit the rack.

How come this wasn't tested and a stronger torsional design chosen, for example, in the form of a thicker pan construction?

Diane Kennedy - that cleaning regimen sounds really difficult! I note that the Wolf manual is silent on the issue of grease getting on the fan blades. Are you saying that you need to remove the back panel after each use? We are trying to decide between the Miele CSO (which comes with a grease filter for roasting) and the Wolf CSO.

Hi All-

This thread has been great!! I'm leaning toward the Wolf. Does anyone know if the 24" is the same interior dimension as the 30"?? (Is it all just trim?) Or do you get a bigger oven?

Thank you!

Same oven, just trim pieces on the 30".

Hi fgvenet, I don't take the back panel off to clean the fan blades every time.. I probably do this about every 6-8 weeks..... and I use the combi oven almost every day.

N,

Sorry to not reply back in 2017 -- I had a log-in issue that took a lot of fuss to fix.

But unfortunately, we are still building our house and after 2 YEARS of owning "new" appliances, we are still 6 weeks out from installation. Meanwhile, my Wolf combi-steam oven has now been replaced by the new version. How NOT to build a home! Fortunately, my other appliances -- fridge, induction cooktop and 30" wall oven -- haven't been updated for 2018.

(Moral of the story: vet your general contractor SUPER CAREFULLY to minimize issues in a long process and relationship!)

No worries @Kitchengirl. We had a renovation horror story ourselves. We're more than a year over due and on our second contractor. Thankfully, it's finally almost done. Our "new"ly installed appliances are almost two years old too, although Miele upgraded us to the newer model dishwasher. I was panicked that I went with the wrong steam oven (Wolf - older model) due to lack of precise control, but decided not to attempt to deal with the hassle and added cost of trying to exchange. Hopefully we'll love it once we get to actually use it! Good luck to you!

Right back at ya, N! Glad that Miele stepped up for you on the DW.

Our Wolf dealer swapped our 30" M-series oven (that sits below our convex-steam oven) after purchase but prior to delivery, after I documented the ventilation fan noise issue, thanks to posts by other M-oven owners on the Garden Web! That's how useful these forums can be.

I don't think I will be disappointed overall with the Wolf convex-steam oven: some details may puzzle or annoy, but I expect that I will really like it, after the learning curve! The chef / advisor at Roth Kansas City told me he had a choice to purchase the new model or the prior model at the same price, and he went with the older model, just a week ago. One reason is that the new oven's interface requires more steps than the older model, something I always notice on a cell phone: too many layers to get through to actually DO something.

We renovated a couple of months ago and installed the Wolf CSO. The warped hot pan issue: it's real, but not an issue if you purchase replacement side panels that have slide outs on the two bottom levels. We found out about them when we went to our local Wolf/SubZero experience center for a steam oven class. The rack set isn't cheap - $430 - but it's worth it. Personally, I think that it should be offered as an option when you purchase the oven. They're super easy to install, just unscrew the ones that come with the oven using the large hand screws in the front interior, and screw the slide out side panels in.

http://www.subzero-wolf.com/assistance/answers/convection-steam-oven-full-extension-racks

Cleaning: what the steam cannot remove, try making a paste of baking soda and vinegar, wiping it on the dirt/baked on parts, and steaming for about 30 minutes. The baked on crud will then magically wipe off, leaving the oven looking like new. I do this about once/week.

We love the CSO. I use it way more often than the Wolf Convection oven installed underneath (and no, we haven't had any flaking issues with our M Convection oven).

RE: Miele vs Wolf. We have a vacation home with Miele speed oven (2010)(combo of microwave and convection with broiler), 30" convection oven, and induction cooktop. We use the speed oven for everything except large meats due to its speed of heating up with the 'rapid heat' feature, but find it inconvenient to not have a microwave available if we are using the oven. But, to simply microwave requires about 5 or 6 steps on the digital panel, a big PITA. And, guests cannot figure out how to use the German minimalist controls for the induction and the microwave. Form over function!

So, with our new home in Seattle (2015) we used all Wolf this time. We use the steam convection oven daily, and we don't clean it much. I did a side by side at Albert Lee showroom putting muffins and almond croissants into the Wolf and the Miele, both cold, set both to steam convection at about 360ºF. The Wolf was easier to set (even the showroom person had difficulty navigating the Miele minimalist digital screen). In about 5 minutes the Wolf produced internally moist, externally browned and crispy croissants, the Miele was not yet flaky or crisp on the outside. So, that made my decision for me!

Does anyone know if the baking soda/peroxide past cleaning regimen damages the Wolf CSO?

Thanks all for the entries. I am late in responding, having just read the thread.

I have previously had a Miele steam oven and to start with, the cleaning was easy, however with more use it become increasingly more difficult. There is nothing worse than having to clean your steam oven before you can sit down to enjoy your meal, so I am very hesitant to buy another.