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Hello, forrest. Welcome to the forum. I will answer some of your questions, but I will leave the WMF pressure issue to Miss Vickie, as I have no personal experience with that brand.

Regarding size: Larger cookers may be used for cooking small amounts, but the reverse is not true. Bear in mind that the stated capacity of pressure cookers is to the brim, but they cannot acutally be filled more than 2/3 full for pressured cooking, and in the case of beans and other foods that foam, half full is the maximum. While smaller cookers certainly have their place in the kitchen, and I use my 4qt fairly often, it is also the one I would miss the least if I had to give one up. It is not as versatile as its larger counterparts. In addition, the PiP method is limited to only the size vessel that will fit inside. I wouldn't consider anything smaller than 6 quart capacity.

Any stainless steel bowl that will fit into the cooker, allow the lid to be locked in place and still have room for steam to build and circulate will do. You might even have such a bowl already. I scouted eBay and thrift stores for the bowls I use. I found a set of 3 size bowls that work nicely.

An important issue that was not addressed in the article is that of replacement parts, gaskets in particular. Whichever cooker you finally decide on, be sure that the gaskets and other parts are easily available and at reasonable cost.

I am curious as to why you would pass over the well-rated Fagor in favor of the WMF?

Forrest, the time it takes to come to pressure does increase in proportion to the size of the cooker. That having been said, there is not an extreme difference between pressurizing the 4 and 6 qt. models, for instance. However, with cooking under pressure, the overall cooking time is so greatly reduced from regular stove-top cooking, that additional minute or two coming to pressure seems insignificant to me. If a cup of rice is the only thing you ever plan to cook, then yes perhaps the smaller cooker is all you will ever need. In your first post you did mention cooking 2 quarts of beans. Now, if that is to be the finished volume, a 4 to 6 qt cooker will certainly be fine [imho]. You already probably have cooked beans the regular way, so you know they absorb water and swell to twice or three times their dry size, and they foam considerably too. So this information needs to be factored into what size cooker you finally decide on.

Price is not always the leading indicator of the best pressure cooker. In all the years I've been pressure cooking, detatchable handles have never been on my wish list. While that may be a nice storage feature, I cannot imagine any other purpose it can serve. In fact, it could turn out to be a nuisance, if the handles somehow become separated from the pan during storage, so that you have to spend time looking for them. Presto makes good stainless steel pressure cookers, very affordable at Amazon.com. In fact, I have 3 Prestos, which I use regularly. These have the "jiggler" pressure regulator. Fagor pressure cookers are "new generation", very easy to use, and also very affordable. I have a 10 qt Fagor Splendid, and I use that one often as well. For the price-conscious shopper, either Fagor or Presto are good choices [with Fagor scoring higher because it seems easier for most people to use, and also some models have 2 pressure settings]. For a brief time I also owned the Fagor 4qt Splendid. My brother admired it, so I gave it to him. The article mentions Innova. Don't bother looking for that one. They are no longer in business, and parts are nearly impossible to find now. Whichever cooker you finally settle on, make certain the parts are easily and affordably available.

Please keep us informed of how you are doing, and if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask. Since you are new to pressure cooking, you might look into Miss Vickie's Big Book of Pressure Cooking. Its more than a cookbook...it's also a valuable resource for how-to's, do's & dont's and time charts.