Kevin, how many ranges do you have and which among them are your favorites for cooking?

Many of the older ranges were designed for heavier oven use with baking and roasting and did a really fine job.  I am a solid Frigidaire fan but don't like controls on the front of the range.  I also felt Hotpoint and GE of the same era had some advantages in speed and evenness of oven browning.  I have never used a Norge or early Westinghouse but I truly feel the Westinghouse appliances of the 60's and 70's were excellent and reliable.  I have used some 50's Kelvinator and Leonard ranges and I'll pass on those.  Do you have space for a 40 inch range in the kitchen in Detroit and what are using now?  Since you have a GE and Hotpoint range at the Lake does that indicate you prefer them?  I love to talk appliance porn and details so feed me up with your thoughts.

I too like the wide and even heat of the Frigidaire burner.  It can blast away for hours with large kettles, pressure canner or simmer the most delicate sauce and never warp, burn through or even scorch the porcelain.  I like GE burners until they introduced infinite heat and after a few years they seems to be all or none while the fixed heat burners were always reliably the same.  I would rather not cook than use gas and like the convenience of the heat value always being the same at each setting on an electric.  I'm not so into playing twister bending over to watch the flame, get it adjusted just right and then have a draft knock it out.  Moreover gas is much slower and if turned too high ruins the handles and exterior of the pans to say nothing of my hands when I pick up a pot.  Even though I am cooking vintage I have never met a smooth top I didn't like.  They are a breeze to keep clean and provide steady and even heat.  Much of what I do is baking so the oven is the single most important factor in any range and it must have mixed heat from above and below while baking.  Any range that says preheat on the selctor dial is going to bake from the bottom only after switched to bake.  Ge bakes like a dream but borwns more than Frigidaire.  My experience has been that Frigidaire outweighs GE and has more insulation thus cycling less often producing evenly baked foods that are not over browned.  For baking cakes nothing in the world is better than a vintage Frigidaire.  No excess brown to trim before decorating for wedding cakes.

Hans, my grandma had a Kenmore double oven range with a griddle in the middle that she got in 1955.  The two ranges look so much alike I wonder if Norge made the 40 ranges for Kenmore at that time.  Do you miss not having it in the kitchen?  I often wonder how you decide which one you like and which one to use when you have so many.

I am blessed to have the NIB Whirlpool convection Microwave which Greg gave me this spring.  I use it daily and it's 1000 watts make short work of microwaving, the convection oven is capacious holding a 9X13 and bigger and has plenty of height to accomodate a tube pan which convection/mix makes short work of.  Its nice to have a second timer so I can time both ovens on the Frigadaire and not have to guess or remember.  Oh my God are we not the luckiest men on earth!

There's a knack to cooking with coal or wood but once you get the hang of it, it makes perfect sense and is quite nice.  Temperature control is largely a matter of proximity to the firebox and taking advantage of direct or indirect heat.  My grandmother switched to an electric stove when the farm was connected to power in the 40's, but she kept the wood cookstove for backup.  That's what my mother learned to cook on, and heat the irons on come laundry day!

There's also the principle of stored heat in heavy cast iron stoves.  I have friends in the UK who lived for a time in an 18th century row house which was heated by burning coal in the fireplace in each room.  They had a modern gas stove in the kitchen but used a coal-fired Rayburn cooker in the winter which doubled as the heat source on that level of the house.  After burning a hot fire in it for a couple hours, enough heat was stored in the heavy castings to do most of the cooking for the day.  The left side of the top (right over the fire chamber) was for boiling and the right side for simmering, and there were two ovens...one hot and another for slow-cooking or warming.    They made the most wonderful oatmeal (porridge!) I had ever tasted.  Before bed the pot of oats with milk and butter were put in the "slow" oven and in the morning it had turned into the most heavenly, creamy concoction imaginable!  Roasts cooked in the "hot" oven were falling-off-the-bone tender, with a crust like it had been cooked on a barbeque grill.

If I had about $15,000 burning a hole in my pocket I would get a modern gas-powered Aga so I could cook like that.  NOT in the summer though.  That constant heat in the room would be unbearable!

I happen to be a good-to-very-good cook, and I have used both gas and electric ranges.  I am also a very good baker.  I have posted more than a few of my recipes here......

My experience is that great food can come from gas ranges as well as electric ones.

I have a gay male friend, who when he had some of the cookies from the first batch of cookies I baked in my new Whirlpool gas range's oven said, and this IS an exact quote; "I love your new oven."  This man has eaten a lot of my baking over the four years I have known him.  He is also a good cook himself.

I will, and do stipulate that gas cooktop cooking does release more heat into the area, but electric cooking (except, of course, for microwaving) also releases heat into the area.  Less, perhaps, but still some.

As for cleaning.......yes, a gas cooktop can be a challenge to clean.  As can a coil top electric.  Smooth tops?  I have used them, and to keep them looking good, one needs to be almost obsessive about cleaning.

Let's please have some balance.

The first two ranges I ever cooked on were gas.  My parents, excellent cooks, cooked very good meals with gas.  I cooked on electrics from 1996 to 2011. I think I have sufficient experience with both.  The two worst I have ever used were a pushbutton GE, and the electric 80s Tappan in this apartment.  Admittedly, they were both heavily used apartment ranges when I got to them.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

(edited for clarity)

I grew up cooking with an electric range but have used gas at times in subsequent years.  I've had success with both and my share of cooking failures with both as well.  The failures were more a matter of the quality/reliability of the stove than the fuel.  There are some differences in how one cooks on either gas or electric but a good cook adapts to what's available and makes the best of it. 

During combustion, natural gas releases a lot of water vapor and this "moist heat" can be advantageous for certain kinds of baking such as bread.  Dry, radiant electric heat has an advantage for some other types of baked goods.  Without adequate ventilation cooking with gas can quickly deplete the oxygen in a room and, particularly if the burners are not carefully regulated, dangerous levels of carbon monoxide can build up.

A good electric surface unit will boil water rapidly and provide a very gentle simmer.  Very high btu gas burners on some modern ranges will heat water almost as quickly.  By using a heavy steel or cast iron heat-diffusing disk over the flame (such as those provided with vintage O&M ranges) or on a stove equipped with a special smaller burner one can achieve a slow simmer without fear of scorching on gas as well.