We are redoing our kitchen and have settled on the Wolf range compared to the other options as better overall for our needs even if not the best at every single aspect. BUT, final research before pulling the trigger has uncovered what appears to be a whole sub-community of Wolf owners on Reddit (and apparently on Houzz, to which we don’t have access) complaining about chipping, cracking, or crazing in the blue porcelain liner, especially after using the self-clean cycle. There were even a couple of class actions.
Trying to figure out if this is a handful of discontented owners among thousands of happy customers or it was more serious but they’ve now fixed it, or if this is a real widespread and continuing problem such that we should move in another direction.
Any Wolf owners out there (or those with familiarity with the experience of other Wolf owners) who want to comment either way?
My wife has insisted I never use the self cleaning on our Thermador. At first I couldn’t imagine it, but it’s for the best on most ovens I think.
If I remember right they had issues with the glass at that temp/time.
I’m with your “at first.” After not having one for a few years, we’ve had self-cleaning oven for the last 26 years and I don’t see us going back to the Easy-Off world, especially spending this kind of money for a self-cleaning oven only to not use that feature. The Viking range we’ve had for that time has had issues from time to time, but thankfully “don’t/can’t use the self-cleaning feature” hasn’t been one of them.
So a range/oven combo? We are about to start our home remodel and have chosen a 5 burner Wolf gas cooktop, and stacked transitional and steam ovens. We’ve had Gaggenau and Fisher Paykel (never again) ovens for the past 40 years and have never used the self cleaning features.
I don’t know what range/oven combo means. In my parlance (guaranteed wrong or your money back), a “range” has both a cooktop and an oven in the same unit, as opposed to a stand-alone cooktop or a stand-alone wall-oven. A range is what we will be buying if we go with the Wolf, but the internet seems to indicate that this issue is with all of their traditional ovens, whether wall ovens or the oven part of a range. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s a common issue and/or whether it’s been fixed.
We have a Wolf dual fuel range that we installed in Spring of 2021 and we’ve had no issues with this. We don’t use self clean though. Not out of any particular attempt to avoid issues; it’s just not something I’ve ever done with any oven I’ve owned. I remember my mom doing it when I was a kid and filling the house with smoke to clean the oven seemed very unpleasant. Maybe we just happen to not bake stuff that’s really messy, but I don’t find a lot of need for hardcore cleaning of the oven. If I’m baking something that I think might overflow, I put a sheet pan or some foil on the shelf below to catch it.
I did also see these complaints on Houzz, so I’m sure it happens to some people, but Houzz mainly attracts people who have problems to report, I think. Also, FWIW I’m pretty sure it’s free and easy to get access to the Houzz forums if you want to read all of the details (I was confused by “we don’t have access [to Houzz]”). But I’m not sure it is all that much more helpful than what you’ve already seen.
I had never heard of it and when I first searched it seemed to be a paid-members-only site and that’s as much effort as I put into it. If there’s a free forum I’ll check it out.
Had 2 different wolf ovens for about 15 years. Never seen cracking or issues on the enamel inside the oven. With that said we learned a long time ago not to use the self cleaning feature. Once when repairing a kitchen aid oven we had a fanatastic repair guy. He said self cleaning cycles are huge cause for control panel issues in ovens. Simple reason is that cycle gets super hot for a very long time. Prolonged very high heat is pretty much bad for all things with repeated use.
We rarely clean ovens and they are not that hard to do when we do. We do keep a layer of tin foil on lowest rack to catch anything that overflows or drips. For those that insist on using the self cleaning I would look at ovens where the controls or any electronics are beside the oven, not above which is where maximum heat is.
This is what you learn in threads like these - I didn’t realize there was an entire sub-culture of people with self-cleaning ovens who never self-clean them! Or, maybe you all are in the majority and those of us who use self-cleaning are the sub-culture!
Unless someone has a major spill event, we probably self-clean the Viking more than once a year but less than twice a year. Very handy.
As I understand these things, the difference between a range and a cooktop is the positioning of the control knobs/touch pads. A range has knobs in front while a cooktop has knobs/touchpads on top. A range is not a cooking surface AND oven.
Have owned a Wolf wall oven (and steam oven and electric range) for 8+ years. Like many others here, have never used self cleaning mode and only need to manually clean 1-2 times per year.
Perhaps for the reasons you note, but when we bought the oven my wife was very insistent that we never use self clean mode.
We were very concerned about this issue, having read that the crazing could happen even without self-cleaning. A touch of research found a note by an appliance guy that suggested conditioning the enamel. We followed this procedure, and no issues after self-cleaning (yet)…
Heat on bake to 250˚
Burn-in for 30 minutes after reaching 250F, then let the oven cool
then 350F for 30 minutes and cool
then 450F for 40 minutes and cool
Finally, 500F for 60 minutes and cool.
