If you don't use your ovens much, why are you looking at double rather than single oven?

If you do want two ovens, I would go with two single ovens stacked. Often, if double ovens break, both ovens are unusable and you have to replace the whole unit. With stacked single ovens, if one breaks, it is entirely independent of the other, so 1) you still have a useable oven, and 2) if you have to replace it, you're replacing one, not two ovens.

We are doing the same setup that darbuka shows - Miele steam oven stacked over Miele ovens. Everyone I know with the steam oven raves about it and says they find it their most useful oven.

I would not worry about reliability of Bosch, Miele, or Jenn-Air ovens, based on what Yale Appliance Blog has to say.

https://blog.yaleappliance.com/most-reliable-wall-ovens

I have been wondering about the double oven question. When we make pizza, it is nice to have two ovens going so that we can get them out a bit more quickly. That's what we used to have, so it is more a matter of going back to what we have. We could probably do with one oven only, I guess. I need to learn more about the steam oven as I am not familiar with its features. What made you go with Miele? I am concerned about all the computerized stuff that I don't think I will need and I feel that it is more stuff that could break down the road, but I do hear that it is a great oven.

I reviewed prices and it looks like the combination CSO and regular convection Miele oven would exceed our budget, at least with the top of the line convection oven. We could possibly do the 6280 and maybe that's ok. Can you comment on the water connection for the steam oven? would that be desirable? The miele double wall oven would fit our budget and, if considered a better option than the wolf, I would consider it

We chose Miele because they had the best combi steam oven in our price range - among other things, it overs a broiler and a plumbed option (the only other one that offers a plumbed model is Gagneau, which was way out of the budget). Also, my mom has standard convection Miele ovens and they're great.

We're pairing that with the 6281 because it has all the same (great) cooking features, but just basic Direct Select knob controls. We don't feel like we need fancy controls for our basic convection oven. The M Touch is a benefit for the steam oven, as the steam control is more complex, but for the convection oven we really prefer the really basic controls of the Direct Select.

I would NOT chose the Sensotronic controls. That's what my mom has, and while we love the oven's cooking performance, everyone agrees the controls are clunky, and we wish they were more straightforward.

I should add, for the steam oven we're doing the XL rather than XXL cavity, as we think there's an advantage of having one oven be smaller and quicker to heat up (while we often use two ovens at once, we almost never need two full height ovens at once). This has the added benefit of keeping the price down.

Thank you so much for all this great info! It really helps to hear about the thought process in the choices you made, and also about the direct experience you had with your and your mother's ovens. I will review and see if this is a better way to go. Being Italian (I am highjacking my husband's profile ;-)) I know Miele is a great company. I think we could do the combo you have. Do you know what the difference between the 6280 and the 6281 is? I had not noticed the existence of the 6281 and it looks like it has exactly the same features of the 6280 but is $1000 less?

The only difference I was ever able to pin down is that the 6180/6280 comes in either the Contour Line or Pure Line style, whereas the 6281 comes only in the Pure Line style.

One more question, since you have been so kind and generous with all the information. One reason I disregarded the Miele early on is because the consumer report ratings for baking and broiling were pretty low. That was worse than many other brands. I take in your experience this has not been the case?

As I’ve written before when Consumer Reports is mentioned here, CR is terrific and dependable when they’re rating cars, lawnmowers and the like. But kitchen-wise, they’re usually behind the curve.

You‘d be better off listening to posters here, who have whatever brand you’re interested with....which is why I feel no sympathy for people who continue to purchase brands like Samsung and Whirlpool, despite the poor reviews here.

Honestly, I didn't look at Consumer Reports. Our experience with them cooking-wise has only been good.

I have KA double convestion wall ovens and I love them but they are 12 yrs old and maybe the new ones not as good. I find mine are very good for baking most things but I have a Bertazzoni all gas range 6 burner with gas convection thet IMO makes better bread and pizza than any electric oven. Wahy I love about the KA ovens is they are so well insulated that even on clean cycle they do not heat up my kitchen