Cooking appliance with a muffle, and method for operating a cooking appliance

The invention relates to a cooking appliance with a muffle (3) which bounds a cooking space (2) and which side walls (4, 5), seats (14a, 14b, 14c, 15 to 18) for preparation devices, the receptacles (14a, 14b, 14c, 15 to 18) are arranged in pairs so that different insertion levels are designed for the preparation and optical display elements (19 to 23) for displaying an insertion plane on the muffle (3) adjacent to the respective assigned receptacles (14a, 14b, 14c are arranged 15 to 18), wherein an operational function of the cooking appliance (1) is associated with at least one preferred insertion plane, which is, after selecting the operating function (by illumination of the associated display elements are displayed 19 to 24), wherein the operating function is a specific illumination device of the cooking cavity (2) operatively associated with and dependi the automatic activation of the lighting device by selecting the operating function g. The invention also relates to a cooking appliance, in addition to or instead of automatic activation of the lighting automatically a question-answer dialogue between the user and the cooking appliance is started depending on the operating function.