Breville toaster oven only. Someone gave me a Smeg toaster for Christmas last year but returned it because I have a small kitchen and don’t want to clog up counter space and the Breville toasts bread and bagels just fine, as well as other duties. Maybe if I had a giant kitchen I would use both.
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I have a 2 slot toaster that must be about 30 years old. It toasts bread, English muffins and bagels quite well. We don’t have counter space for a toaster oven…
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One obvious advantage of the toaster oven is that you can toast bagel halves, thick slices of bread, etc., that wouldn’t fit in a slot toaster.
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That is a real beauty!
It makes perfectly evenly browned toast with out drying out the bread. The heating coils are spaced about an 1/4 inch apart, so much better than modern toasters!
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Those of us who are fans of Red Dwarf secretly want an entire kitchen full of Smeg appliances just so we can mispronounced that word as often as possible.
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I think a consensus has emerged that the traditional configuration slot toaster produces superior toast, and faster, than does a toaster oven. IMO/IME, these results flow directly from the typical slot toaster design: the thin resistive elements, essentially bare wires, are strung narrowly apart and positioned quite close to the bread. TOs, on the other hand, generally have larger, widely-spaced elements that can be long distances from the bread.
The larger the TO, the further the elements are from the bread–my Breville 800 takes over 7 minutes to toast two English muffin halves. By the time the faces are acceptably browned, there is very little spring to the interiors.
In restaurant and commercial settings, slot toasters rule, with the large-scale exceptions being conveyor belt units.
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I use my Breville toaster oven pretty much every single day for toast and assorted other things. While I agree that a slot toaster makes better toast overall, I preheat the Breville for a few minutes and when the bread goes in, I flip it halfway through so it gets toasted on both sides.
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Unless your programming only allows SMEEEE HEEEE!
Twist my nipple nuts and send me to Alaska! I need to watch that show again.
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I like my single long slot toaster. It will hold two regular slices, or one long slice from a hand crafted loaf. I also buy by the length of the guarantee., having bad luck with a short guarantee toaster.
My countertop oven takes 9.5 to toast bread. It does pretty good job but I could live my whole life waiting for toast. Kinda like being in the wrong lane on a California freeway during commute. You can have all your children in that lane waiting for an opening to move to the next lane.
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Gracious. My Insta take 4m20 for a single piece of toast from cold. If rhe roomies want toast after mine is done the time drops accordingly
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I have a cousin who collects toasters, and she said the toaster oven makes the best toast. It isn’t as fast, that’s for sure.
We haven’t replaced the toaster in our kitchen for years now as we don’t want another appliance out. I use the toaster oven all the time, especially for broiling. So the toaster is a thing of the past for us.
Your cousin must prefer dry toast and taking her time.
I too use the a Breville toaster oven, and wouldn’t want any other brand, even without the extra bells and whistles. Cheap toaster ovens aren’t great for toasting evenly. I like the much easier process of cleaning out the crumbs in a toaster oven, and my Breville is just a quick slide out of the tray at the bottom for easy cleaning.
Yes, it takes longer because the heat isn’t as close to the heating elements, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want my items toasted just right, and if being patient is the way to go, then so be it. I don’t like things super toasted anyway - it makes the bread super crumbly and dry. If I want dry, crumbly toast, I’d have crackers with my eggs instead. I stick to light settings and a bagel takes 3.5 minutes for me.
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Maybe she toasts bagels like I do. The bagels I get are quite large and half a bagel doesn’t seem to fit well in even wide-mouth slots. The toaster oven does a glorious job on those as well as a toasting buns for burgers, which I also do on the broiler setting. I’m a happy camper.
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Our office had a slot toaster, and invariable someone would toast a bagel (we had a generous director who would buy bagels for bagel Friday every 2 weeks) that would burn because it was stuck. Fat bagels could be jammed in, but no one things about how easily they might come out.
I will say that I think the best toast is made on the stovetop with a pan and watching and nurturing each slice of bread (or bagel) and flipping as necessary.
Because like all things in life, good toast takes time.
