Single Or Double Smeg Oven?
i currently have a range-style oven with 4 gas burners, 2 electric burners, and separate grill and oven cavities. There are also 2 separate cavities – possibly plate warmers, but too small for dinner plates and never used. I want a new oven as the current one is rubbish – won’t produce crispy roast potatoes, mainly (I think) due to build up of steam in the oven. It also cooks unevenly (e.g. pizzas burned at the back and raw at the front) and has no lights on it signalling whether it is on or off, which has led to it being left on all night. Problem is, the space for the oven is 80cm wide and there are very few new ovens of that width. One of the best seems to be a Smeg, but it only has one (large) cavity for grill and oven. My last oven only had a single cavity for both and was fine, but I am worried about spending £800 on a new one and not having a separate grill. In reality, does anyone think this is a major issue (relatively speaking of course – I realise it is far from major!)
Although money can be seen as an issue, I’d reccommend the double oven. If you wish to bake more than one thing at once they will take on each other’s flavours during the cooking process. This is fine if you’re making roast beef and are also roasting potatoes. But in the event that one thing you are cooking is savoury and strongly flavoured, eg a heavily marinated rack of lamb, and you wished to also make a baked dessert, your dessert would take on the flavour of the lamb if you were to cook it in the single oven at the same time as the lamb.
Although, to be honest, you could always go around this problem by timing your cooking so that you don’t have more than one thing in the oven at once, and you’d end up saving money.
Either option is viable, but I reccommend the double oven for sheer value and usefulness.
Here in the US it has been the normal state of affairs for many decades to combine the baking/roasting and grilling functions in a single oven. So much so that you would be hard put to find a stove that had separate baking and grilling compartments without spending several thousand dollars minimum. There are no problems with the custom that I am aware of from more than 50 years of cooking.
Hi Jon, I have a Smeg single oven and I’ve got to tell you I’ve had a couple of problems with it.
I dont mind too much not having a separate grill but ( with hindsight ) I’d have been better off with a double oven instead of one huge one ( 80cm width ). The single oven takes a very long time to heat up and does not alternate between temps very quickly – something you really need when you dont have a double oven. Plus there are slightly irregular hotspots – depite it being a fan oven.
Also the element goes regularly ( more regularly than a normal oven anyway ) as it is using a domestic power source for a non-domestic sized oven. The elements are non-standard and so are expensive and difficult to find. Ditto the lightbulbs – also non-standard, expensive and hard to find. All in all the costs have tended to mount up.
Lastly, one of the gas burners has busted and other Smeg owners I’ve spoken to have had problems with display numbers rubbing off and control knobs falling off.
I really dont recommend a huge single oven in a domestic kitchen and I dont recommend Smeg as a brand – they are a brand that comes off badly in many reviews ( not to mention my personal experience ). Sorry.