OVEN, MAKE ME A CASSEROLE

You knew it was coming. The voice-activated, WiFi-connected oven is here. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Dacor introduced its IQ Discovery line of ranges. The version I saw, the 36” wide model, has Dacor’s fancy hand-built body, its super-controllable dual-fuel burners, and a big touch screen to control the oven. It’s $9,000.

Geeks, your oven is here. (Photos by Rafe Needleman)

For that price, roughly five times more than you can spend on a lesser range, you get nerd features like a screen that can display recipes and perform other computery functions. More interesting is its WiFi connection, which lets you control the oven from Dacor’s smartphone apps (Android and iPhone). In fact, you can speak to the app, and, for example, ask it to pre-heat the oven for you as you pick up ingredients for a casserole at the grocery store. It will talk back to you in turn, just like Siri.

And, of course, is something goes wrong in the oven, you’ll get diagnostic info on your smartphone.

If you’re a tech geek and you cook — and you’re rich — this is the oven for you. For now. The issue I have with computerizing appliances (and cars) is that digital technology advances much more rapidly than appliances. Your $9,000 Dacor range will still be a fantastic oven and stovetop 20 years from now, but I guarantee that the 7” LCD display is going to look like throwback tech in less than five. And recipes will always be easier to read on a big tablet propped up on your counter than a smallish LCD permanently attached to your oven.

The range’s screen shows recipes.

Dacor execs tell me that the product is future-proof because it’s about more than the screen: Developers can write apps that work with the range, and as apps get smarter, so should your cooking. Eventually the range might also get Apple Home Kit integration. Or maybe it has it already. The rep I spoke with hadn’t heard of it before.

I do like the idea of a connected oven. It’d be great to be able to pre-heat an oven from the store, or to check cooking status (to see if the oven timer has counted down yet, for example), or see fault codes, and so forth. I expect that this type of connectivity will be a standard feature of ovens in a few years anyway. I’d wait. Unless I was loaded, in which case, this looks like a great range, with a nice little screen grafted onto the front of it.