Fulgor Milano Sofia 48 Professional Series Pyro

For over 70 years the Menenghetti family have been combining artisanal skills with a passion for quality and contemporary design, and Fulgor Milano has gained a huge reputation for producing truly impressive cooking appliances which sell across the globe - particularly in the USA. Freestanding range cookers have always been a strong part of their portfolio, and the Sofia collection (named in honour of the elegant Italian movie star) was launched in 2015 - a bold, clean and rigorous design with a professional outlook and all the quality, performance and style you would expect of this exceptional brand. The elegant design also has a monolithic quality; the rectilinear intersections of the brushed aluminium facia, branding and touch control panel, together with the chunky solid metal controls, sturdy door handles and the flat ironworks on the hob have a combined effect which is impressive and reassuring. This is a cooker to be taken seriously. As a nice touch, you can order a bespoke name-plate with “signature” content and style of your own choosing, which will be engraved and delivered separately.

This 48 inch FM-CEG-1216-FSSS model (1216mm wide) is 89mm deeper than the standard UK cabinet, so it will either project slightly into the room (this can look very appealing), or if you prefer a flush look you will need to build your kitchen accordingly. This purposeful cooker features TWO multifunction ovens - a 124.5 litre main oven (gross capacity) with dual internal fans and a range of fanned, non-fanned and grilling functions to give you all the versatility you could need (including warming and proving settings), all with an A-class energy rating. Rapid pre-heat gets the oven to temperature with convenient haste, and there is an automatic pyrolytic cleaning cycle in both ovens to bring the cavity up like new every time. Inside each oven are two heavy duty racks, one of which can be set up on telescopic runners, an enamel tray with anti-splash insert, and in the main oven a plug-in food probe which works in conjunction with the 6-digit touch control timer to cook to a target temperature for perfect results. Unusually, this impressive spec is repeated on the smaller 76.5 litre oven, giving the user an amazing degree of flexibility and performance. Worth noting is that this Professional range is made using touch-proof stainless steel, so it will keep looking good even after some serious work, and the quadruple-glazed, soft-close oven doors cleverly use heat reflecting glass to keep the external temperature below 50°C even during the 465° pyrolytic cleaning cycle.

On the top, the eye is caught by the rather slab-like cast iron pan supports which not only look great but their deceptively elegant design allows very smooth movement of pans across their even surface. Beneath these you will find six professional, brass-bound double crown “Crescendo” gas burners, amazingly flexible and enduring, with dual control allowing adjustment from a very gentle 0.35kW up to a sizzling 4.5kW. This is a uniquely impressive feature - most ranges will have one or perhaps two of these burners, but the presence of six of these marks this cooker out as a true professional with the shear power to perform like no other. To supplement these there is a superb Trilaminate stainless steel griddle plate over a tubular gas element, and this gives you a brilliant cooking surface when called upon, or a very handy standing surface when dormant. The hotplate itself is coated in a matt porcelain enamel for resilience (it looks nice too), and all burners have an automatic re-ignition feature.

All in all, this is the cooker of a lifetime, and if you love cooking or simply want an amazing kitchen to show off to your friends, this is the range cooker to do it with. A pure pedigree, wonderful engineering and Italian passion all in one glorious package.